Today dawned bright but as we (rightly) suspected cold so this altered our plans somewhat. After our experiences of yesterday when we had been to the park and Meg got a little cold, we decided to take extra precautions this morning. So accordingly, I made sure that Meg wore an outsize pair of my socks over her own to keep her feet and legs warm and put on an extra gilet to keep her a little warmer. I texted our Italian friend down the road to tell her that I intended to push Meg just as far as her house and then to turn back so that Meg could get some fresh air but not get too chilled. Our friend texted us to the effect that she was going to be out this morning but this strategy of ours worked out quite well because we had a bit of a constitutional without placing two much stress on either of us. Then it was a case of returning home and I experimented by making a beef and tomato soup (packet of tomato soup but enhanced by a spoonful of Bovril) and this was quite a nice change for us as well. Naturally, ever since yesterday, we have been reflecting upon the very sad demise of the celebrated TV doctor, Dr. Michael Mosley. The newspapers are reporting the news that he may well have died within fifty metres of the relative safety of the community where they were on holiday. If this report is substantially correct, then it makes his death even harder to bear for the many of us who feel very diminished by his death. I have several of his books adorning my bookcases and the very sight of them is evoking immense sadness when I think about the way that he lost his life. I wonder, though, how a man such as him could have not with them a tracking watch or even a mobile phone, the simplest of which would almost certainly have saved his life. This, of course, we shall never know. There is another item of news upon which I have been reflecting since yesterday. Several of the letters in yesterday’s ‘Sunday Times’ comment upon the fact that Rishi Sunak’s premature departure from the D-Day celebrations was one of the greatest political gaffes within recent political history. The letter writers made the point that there was perhaps a latent anti-Europeanism at work running through this episode in that Rishi Sunak had attended events which had a sole focus on the British veterans but then decided to absent himself from any events with a more international flavour.

Later on this morning, I had a call from the partner of one’s Meg’s carers who did quite a lot of gardening work for people in our situation. Although the lawns have been cut on a regular basis each week, the rest of the garden has been sadly neglected and is getting quite overgrown. So I was very pleased to see this gardener who surveyed what had to be done and thought, that with another helper, he could do a real blitz on the garden and restore a semblance of order after a day’s intensive work. When he called around, fortunately Meg was being attended to by some of her carers in the middle of the day so we were able to survey the garden and work out a system of priorities. It is possible that we might be able to have the work done some time next week which suits us absolutely fine and all I need to organise is evidently some cash in hand which is required for jobs of this nature. I knew that at one stage the garden problem needed to be faced so Meg’s carer who recommended her partner actually did us a tremendously good turn. Once we get the garden turned around, I think I need to work out how to have a regular gardener once again rather than a blitz merchant although this is evidently necessary from time to time. When Meg and I were renting a property in Hampshire in between the sale of our house in Leicestershire and the purchase of another in Hampshire, the fairly up market estate agents always ensured that the gardens of the houses on their books were kept in good condition. One can understand the reasons for this and evidently the ‘true’ cost is hidden within the overall rent but it meant that the house we were renting in Hampshire had a beautifully maintained garden when it was first viewed. To cut a long story short, once we moved into our permanent home, we employed one of the estate agent gardeners and his brother and between them they came around about twice a year and really transformed the garden. They deployed a lot of forest bark around the shrubs once they had done the basic pruning and weeding and I remember the astonishment with which I greeted the sight of a transformed and radically neatened garden when we first employed them and I returned home from work to witness the results.

This week is the week in which the various manifestos are being launched. We are starting off today with the launch of the Liberal Democrats manifesto which struck a very different tone to the usual debates about tax and spend. The Liberals used their leader, Sir Ed Davey, to highlight the plight of carers and to promise that all social care should be fully tax payer funded. Ed Davey spoke poignantly about the way he needed to care for his mother in her declining years when he was himself only a boy and now he is faced with similar problems caring for a disabled son. But the Lib Dem slogan is ‘Save the NHS’ because the problem of inadequate social care is causing a huge backwash through the NHS as not being able to discharge patients and has created a huge blockage in the system. One is reminded of the fact that both political parties have been promising to reform social care for seemingly a decade or so now but the costs are so enormous that the problem is constantly being kicked into the long grass as they say. Although the Liberals will not in power after the next election, it could be that if a goodly number of them replace Conservatives in the next House of Commons then there might be the change in political climate for this particular nettle to be grasped.

We woke up this morning to a beautiful and bright sunny day, so we thought this boded well for a little trip down to the park later on in the morning. After the carers had got Meg up, washed and dressed we had a quick lunch and started watching the Politics programs which were, of course, still dominated by the story of Rishi Sunak’s D-Day gaffe when he left the celebrations early. Naturally, the Tories are doing what they can to mitigate the damage by stressing the patriotism of the current Prime Minister but, of course, it is very much damage limitation territory. Trevor Phillips on Sky even was sufficiently bold to ask a Government minister sent out to defend Rishi Sunak whether the Tories would actually lose less seats in the forthcoming election were they to choose a new leader even at this point. Of course, this is never going to happen but it is instructive that a political interviewer can even ask the question. During the course of the Politics programmes, there was a news flash that indicated that a body had been found on the Greek island of Symi which must have been that of the missing TV presenter, Dr. Michael Mosley. I must confess that a tear sprang to my eye when I heard the news as it is pretty certain when the full facts are known that Michael Moseley lost his life at the age of only 67. The dramatic irony of all of this is all too evident to all of us and naturally the airwaves of full of the details as they gradually emerge. The latest news that we have is that a body has been recovered and was being sent to a mortuary presumably before a post-mortem examination. Given his popularity and the massive amount of TV programmes that Dr Mosley made during his lifetime, I wonder whether the broadcasting authorities will make a biography of his life. Although he was best known for his approaches to dieting, he was not averse to bouts of self experimentation when it came to demonstrating certain physiological characteristics and some of these seemed brave in the extreme. Above all, his work was always scientifically well-informed and researched and he sought to evidence all of his work rather than spinning a fanciful theory for the sake of it.

Our walk to the park did not turn out to be as pleasant as we had anticipated. Although the day started off brilliantly sunny, by the time we came to walk to the park it had clouded over and was quite chilly. Although I had obviously out an anorak on Meg she felt the cold quite intensely whilst we were sitting on our normal bench. Then I discovered, that although I had prepared a flask of coffee I had forgotten to load it into our little travel bag as I had taken down a smoothie for Meg to replace the coffee. We were just on the point of texting our friend to say that we were going to start to walk back again, he saved the day and gave us some of the coffee from his own flask which warmed us up a little. Naturally, on the way home then what is termed Sod’s Law swung into operation because half up the hill, the chilling cloud rolled away and it got almost warm again. I think perhaps I always need to take an extra jumper along with me because Meg does feel thew cold more than I do. So when we got home, it was back to the chicken soup routine to warm us up again, much as we did yesterday. Meg watched the concluding part of the Pilgrimage program in which a group of modern day pilgrims were traversing Scotland to reach Iona. I have enjoyed these programs of which the first was a journey from the Swiss Alps to Rome, the second a journey through Portugal to Fatima, the third being a pilgrimage encompassing the Celtic shrines across North Wales and then this final Scottish one. I am not sure if the BBC intends to make any more of a similar nature but for Meg and I they are highly appropriate Sunday viewing.

Robert Ford is a professor of politics well known for writing ‘Revolt on the Right’ documenting the rise of the right wing. Today, he is openly speculating about the plight of Rishi Sunak speculating this might be the week the wheels came off for Rishi Sunak. After two weeks of campaigning for ‘a clear plan of bold action for a secure future’ the verdict in the polls is clear: voters don’t like his clear plan, they do not want his bold actions, and they believe their future will be more secure without him. All of this was true even before the prime minister’s calamitous Thursday afternoon decision to leave D-day commemorations early for a pre-recorded media interview. So the possibility is being raised that the Tory party as we have come to know it might be almost completely annihilated in the forthcoming election. The same thing did happen to the Conservative party in Canada and some commentators are now openly speculating that if the Reform party continues to grow in strength as it appears to be doing, then the same fate might befall the Tories. The opinion polls in the next few days might prove to be illuminating when the full effect of the D-Day gaffe and Farage’s assumption of the leadership party are taken into account by the electorate. But the modern Conservative party really understands how to gain and then retain power aided not least by very compliant right wing press. If a lot of the press swings behind Reform the Tory party may well be doomed but it is very early days yet and we still have three and a half weeks of the polls to go. Election campaigns often contain unplanned incidents that send a campaign off the rails but not a single vote has yet been cast. But it could be that the electorate has already made up its mind weeks if not months ago and therefore we are in a situation where the campaign itself, disastrous though it might be, does not actually change many minds at all. Our own voting cards arrived in the past a few days ago and I suspect that those who have oped for voting by post will receive their postal votes shortly. So by the time that election day comes, a lot of votes will already have been cast and therefore the results baked in, whatever the latest onion polls say.

This morning we had in mind to make our usual journey down the hill to see our friends in the Waitrose cafeteria and were relieved that the weather app on my phone informed us that the rather drizzly start to the day would clear up shortly after 9.00am in the morning. I have put into place a new little system to help with Meg’s ablutions first thing every morning, now that Meg’s hospital bed is relocated downstairs. Rather than carrying bowls of warm soapy water along corridors which was almost an accident waiting to happen, I scoured the web and purchased two ‘mini’ i.e. miniaturised little buckets which fulfil their intended function absolutely admirably. These mean that I can carry hot water, soap and sponges easily from downstairs ground floor toilet to ‘bed-room’ easily and transport them back again. I had previously looked up my records and discovered that today was indeed the sixth anniversary to the date when I had my colon cancer operation. With a certain amount of glee, I recounted the story that the (Asian) surgeon earnestly asked me if I had any questions about the forthcoming operation. I replied to the effect that I only had one question which ran along the lines that when the operation was completed and he was holding my body in his one hand and the diseased and excised portion of bowel in the other, could he ensure that he threw away the right bit! This was not the appropriate time for a burst of black humour and the surgeon professed that he had no idea what I was talking about so I abandoned the idea of any further questions. We spent about an hour in Waitrose with our friends, including our University of Birmingham friend who had joined us and, as always, they are very kindly when Meg feels a little wobbly. We did some shopping for things that only Waitrose sells and then made for home. I had not checked the exact time that the mid-day carers were due to call and we arrived home some five minutes late. However, and fortunately, the carers were themselves running a few minutes late themselves so we had actually arrived home before them. As Meg was feeling a little chilled upon our return, I regaled her (and myself) with some chicken soup which we find is a good restorative (as indeed, used to be a staple of Jewish households). The web revealed to me the information that chicken soup with matzo balls, affectionately known as Jewish penicillin or ‘matzo ball soup’ for short, is a traditional Jewish comfort food. It is traditionally served on Passover, along with other classics like brisket and matzo crack, but Jewish mothers and grandmothers think of it as a year-round cure-all for everything from colds to more serious ailments.

One wonders how long the Rishi Sunak mistake in leaving the D-Day celebrations before the international part of the celebrations began is going to rumble on. I tuned into the BBC debate between seven party leaders last night which was a rumbustious shouting match in the main between Penny Mordant for the Conservatives and Angela Raynor for the Labour party. The audience as a whole and no doubt many viewers wondered what kind of comment Penny Mordant would make as she represents a very military constituency (Portsmouth North) and had herself been a rival for the leadership in the most recent Tory party leadership battles as a result of which Rishi Sunak was elected. Penny Mordant pulled no punches, declaring that Sunak had been ‘completely wrong’ and indeed ‘very wrong’ and probably made no friends amongst the Tory High Command. But, of course, she is one of the front runners for any leadership race once Rishi Sunak is defeated and is fighting hard to retain her seat in Portsmouth North so probably felt she had to completely condemn her own leader. She then went on to tear into Angela Raynor with well-rehearsed and prepared attack lines but Angela Raynor was relatively muted in her response, probably not wanting to grant any hostages to fortune. It is very rare that I agree with anything that Nigel Farage, the new leader of Reform has to say for himself but his contribution last night hit the point home. He said it was a ‘complete and utter disgrace’ from an ‘unpatriotic’ Prime Minister, adding: ‘If his instinct was the same as the British people, he would never have contemplated for a moment not being there for the big international celebration and it shows how disconnected he is with the people of this country.’ We will have to see if this story will run and run and what the Sunday newspapers make of this enormous election gaffe.

There is quite a dramatic human interest story developing this afternoon. The celebrated TV doctor and author, Dr. Michael Mosley who has written seemingly scores of diet books has gone missing on a small Greek island. He was apparently going to walk a few kilometres home to where he was holidaying with his wife but failed to arrive at the anticipated time. Some of the early part of his journey home seems to have caught on CCTV but after that he has vanished without trace. The Greek authorities have been searching for him for a couple of days now but evidently without success. The weather has been very hot and there is a theory that he could have succumbed to a heatstroke. On the day that he disappeared, the temperatures might have been approaching 40 degrees and the search dogs themselves can only work for an hour at a time. In addition, we know from his many writings that he is a diabetic which may or may not have been insulin controlled but although this has not been mentioned in the TV despatches, this must be a factor that cannot be ruled out in his disappearance. A statement by Dr Clare Bailey Mosley came as the couple’s four children arrived on the Greek island of Symi and the focus of the extensive search for the broadcaster shifted to a snake-infested mountainous area after CCTV footage emerged of his last known movements. There is a certain dramatic irony in the disappearance of this very well known character – I have several of his books on my bookshelves and the 18:6 approach to dieting has been followed by many (including myself, for brief periods) Is it possible that this well known author, advocating the sensible diet to follow to help to sustain a long and healthy life has indeed lost his own life at quite an early age?

Today we had no firm intentions for the day as events had rather conspired against us. I received a text last night from our University of Birmingham friend with whom we had a vague arrangement that we might meet later on today. But our friend was having to go to the dentist for an emergency repair to a tooth this morning so we made a firmer arrangement to meet in the Waitrose cafeteria tomorrow morning. After we had breakfasted, we knew that the Eucharistic minister was due to call around at 10.30 which indeed she did and we were very pleased to see her. There was no real time to go down to the park as the late morning care workers were scheduled within the hour. Meanwhile, we received a visit from a District nurse who had been given a very unclear remit as to what was expected of her. But she confirmed to us that Meg’s leg seemed to be in a good condition so that is one worry less. Earlier on in the day, I had sent a message to our GP practice for some creams that Meg’s carers have suggested might be useful to her and suggested that I get onto the GP to request a prescription. By mid afternoon, I had received a reply not from a GP but from the community pharmacist who gave me the good news that he had added two items onto Meg’s prescription list so these ought to be working their way through the system but may take some days to arrive. But in the short term, I have some other creams that the care staff can deploy and it is part of their protocols that they know that creams have to be applied regularly to people who are vulnerable so I am quite reassured that this aspects of caring for Meg is not being neglected.

There is an absolutely massive political story developing today and it follows on from the Rishi Sunak ‘lie’ that the Labour party are going to tax every working family in the land an extra £2,000. The senior civil servant at the Treasury has rushed to declare that the costings for the sum of £2,000 had not been prepared or promulgated by civil servants within the Treasury and rested upon assumptions made by the Tory policy advisers. So this particular row has been rumbling on for days and has now collided with the D-Day celebrations. But the major political story is this. Whilst other world leaders (the Presidents of France, Canada, USA) all attended the D-Day celebrations and were present until the very end, listening to the stories of the veterans themselves. Given the demographics involved, many of the veterans are now aged 100 and very few will be around in the next few years to attend any future celebrations, for example in five year’s time. But Rishi Sunak cut short his attendance at the celebrations in order, ostensibly,, to give an interview to ITN in which he was to maintain the veracity of the £2,000 tax claim. But even this claim is disputed, as others in the Tory party have said that the logistics for this D-Day had been planned a long time ago and Rishi Sunak always intended to leave the celebrations early. The optics for this for the Tory party could hardly be worse. Firstly, it really does look as though Sunak did not appreciate the importance of attending these celebrations and seems to have demeaned the office of Prime Minister when every other world leader (including Jo Biden) stayed until the conclusion of the celebrations. So by returning to the shores of the UK early, Rishi Sunak seems to have demonstrated both a lack of patriotism, a massive lack of judgement and one of the most spectacular own goals that a Tory leader, some 20 points behind Labour and only 2 points ahead of Reform, could possibly make. Sunak has since issued a half-apology for returning to the UK early which has convinced hardly anybody and the opposition parties, of all kinds of political persuasions, cannot quite believe that a Tory leader could make such a crass mistake.

Last night, I rather wanted to watch ‘Question Time‘ but it did not seem to be broadcast at the normal time – however, Meg and I are enjoying very much watching it on the BBC i-Player this afternoon. At the time of the broadcast, the D-Day blunder had not occurred but the audience was well aware of the £2,000 lie and seemed to be universally skeptical about it. I have to say, though, for the sake of political balance, that the Labour party did itself no favours by responding to the original Tory ‘dodgy dossier’ with an equally dodgy dossier of their own which only further demeans the whole political debate. But what I am rather enjoying about the present Question Time broadcast is that the Tory minister is being laughed at by many of the audience (in Chester) and I suspect that being openly derided by their electorate is something that politicians find particularly hard to bear. There is going to be an election debate this evening in which Penny Mordant, one of the Tory party hopefuls once Sunak loses the election, is going to go head to head with Angela Raynor, the deputy leader of the Labour party in a mixed party debate. But an opinion poll has been published this afternoon which indicates that Mordaunt may well lose her seat. Penny Mordaunt, has been tipped to lose her seat in Portsmouth North as bookies cut the odds on Conservatives winning the General Election. Ms Mordaunt, an MP since 2010, served as a Cabinet member under three of the UK’s last five Prime Ministers. One can only wonder what the effect of this will be on morale – the Tory party is showing every sign of imploding. Our visitor from church this morning actually told us about a website called ‘stopthetories.vote’ in which interested members of the electorate can put in their postcode and be informed which party is best placed to defeat the Tory candidate. So this is tactical voting in action and when I consulted the website and inserted the postcode for Bromsgrove, I got the news that the Tory candidate only seems to have a lead of 1%-2% and there is still the best part of a month to go. Of course, the Labour party must be secretly hoping that the Reform party go from strength to strength which can only be to the detriment of the Tories across the nation.

Today is the day when our friends from Hampshire are due to drop in to see us and we have been looking forward to their visit for a week or so now. Meg had a slightly disturbed night last night which meant that it took us some time to come round this morning but we managed to get ourselves up and ready for the carers’ early morning call. Then after breakfast, it was time for the ‘sitting’ carer to call so that I could get out and do the weekly shopping. The carer who sits with Meg on Thursday mornings is a pleasant girl and she and Meg generally get on pretty well. I left them both watching the ‘Post Office’ enquiry live feed until the YouTube froze and we had to tune onto something else. I got my shopping done at my usual Aldi store and then the carer and I started to unpack it slowly after I had treated myself to a little coffee break. Then it was time for the carers to make their calls and to depart and I busied myself preparing some vegetables that we could alongside the quiche that we were going to have for lunch. In between the kitchen and the Music Lounge, I witnessed some of the celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the ‘D’ Day invasions that are taking place in Normandy. One particular celebration was the fact that the president of France, Macron, was awarding the ‘Legion d’Honeur’ to some of the particular aged veterans, probably averaging about 100 years old, who had managed to travel to France for the occasion. After the French president had embraced each old soldier, the award was pinned onto their costumes followed by a handshake with Jo Biden, the American president, who was also present for the celebrations. I found that this was a strangely moving experience and Meg evidently felt the same about the schemes that we were witnessing. Then we had quiche accompanied by the mixture of fried vegetables (onions, peppers, tomatoes, petit pois and some onion gravy). After this, we needed to prepare for the arrival of our friends from Hampshire who we were expecting at about 2.30. They turned up on time and stayed for a very pleasant couple of hours, accompanied by their very amiable dog. I had bought some cake and some little mini-byte type titbits and this was fine to accompany or coffee. Our friends needed to depart, not least to claim their room before the very end of the afternoon and they were anxious not to get blocked in by the cars of the carers who were due to arrive in the late afternoon. As it happened, our friends departed and the carers for Meg turned up in the late afternoon with only about 30 seconds between the departure of one and the arrival of the others. Once settled in our normal lounge, I found a program on YouTube which was basically a biography of Mozart and although we had seen this once before, I hope that Meg would find this sufficiently diverting.

By tomorrow, Friday. most of the candidates for the various political parties should have been selected. In every single party, there seem to be various shenanigans going on. For the Tories, it can be quite a scramble to secure a nomination when there have been several re-drawing of the boundaries of constituencies by the Electoral Commission. The Labour party seem to be doing their best to ensure that any Corbyn supporting would-be MPs are excluded from shortlists. And the Reform party say that they are going to put candidates into practically ever constituency in the country. When there is an unseemly rush like this, there is always the prospect that candidates who would otherwise have been weeded out by a more rigorous selection process with appropriate due diligence get selected almost by accident. We have seen in the last Parliament one or two individuals who one wonders how they ever got through a selection process – in short some ‘oddballs’ may end up getting elected. Almost inevitably in times of general election campaigns, the question arises as to how the electorate takes decisions. We know from the referendum that there were several ‘big lies’ that might have swung the result and one wonders whether the Tories ‘£2,000’ tax bombshell might resonate with politically uninformed voters and gain the Tory party some seats. When Meg and I were on holiday in Yugoslavia, we had an interesting discussion about democracy with one of the quite young Yugoslav tour guides (who spoke her three national languages before learning German, Italian and then English as her sixth language) We were informed that the hotel in which we were lodged was run by a director who had been elected by members of staff (had he actually made enough profit in the last year) And the senior school pupils and the teachers elected the headmaster of their local school (on the basis of whether the exam results were good enough) In short, Yugolavs did not live in a democracy and could not change their government but they could, and did, have a lot of day to day control over the institutions shaping our lives whereas in the UK, of course, we do live in a democracy but only ‘demock’ for a new government every 4-5 years and do not have the same degree of control over local institutions that the Yugoslavs seemed to enjoy. So I believe that the question of how we exercise our democratic freedoms is quite important. I am quite impressed by the way that the Irish, for example, used the discussions given by Citizens’ Assemblies to achieve some degree of consensus over abortion law reform which could eventually be passed into law. So Citizens Assemblies could be an experiment which might help us cope with difficult questions such as Climate Change and Assisted Dying both of which are huge questions are not particularly well dealt with in our current political institutions.

This has been quite an interesting day so far. Meg and I slept in a little later than we normally both have liked but the carers came and got Meg up, washed, dressed and into her ‘going out’ wheelchair. After we had breakfasted, we made an excursion to the park, made easier by the fact that I had made a lightning visit just after breakfast to collect my newspaper. It was a pleasant day and we exchanged pleasantries with the normal cohort of dog walkers whilst we were sitting on our bench overlooking the pond. A few days ago, I found some sunglasses which had evidently dropped off a pram or a buggy and had been placed on a wall near Waitrose. So I gave these a clean up and asked Meg if she would like to try them did, which she did imitating the Sophia Loren look (who, I believe, use to wear large sun glasses before it became fashionable to do so) Last night, after Meg was in bed, I watched the first of the televised debates between Sunak and Starmer hosted by ITV. In this debate, Sunak was adjudged to be the narrow winner and it was not hard to see why. From somewhere, Sunak produced a figure that an incoming Labour government would tax each family £2,000 and when Starmer did not immediately deny this, the point was pressed over and over again. Naturally, all of the Conservative leaning newspapers (which is most of them) repeated this claim over and over again and it is probably the case that most people, hearing the claim repeated over and over again and not immediately denied, would tend to believe it. But in the cold light of day, analysts have started to examine this claim and have found it as near to a lie as it is possible to be. It looks as though some policy advisers to the Conservative party had some, but not all of the Labour spending plans ‘verified’ by some Treasury officials and then did some totting up and dividing by the total number of households to arrive at the £2,000 figure over a Parliament. But this morning the Labour Party have been quick to denounce this figure as an absolute lie whilst the Treasury itself produced a letter which had indicated to the Tory policy advisers that this computed figure had not been produced by civil servants and the data they produce should not be quoted in any party political broadcasts. So having produced a ‘dodgy dossier’ the Labour party has produced its own dodgy dossier and the Tories have responded with their own dodgy dossier Mark 2 arguing that the initial estimates of £2,000 per family were too conservative an estimate. So what we are left with is the two large political parties, both arguing about dodgy numbers and statistics and with nobody any the wiser until much after the original claim has been made and the damage done. One is reminded of the EU referendum bus campaign in which the amount that the UK sent to the EU each year was painted on the side of a campaign bus. Like other examples of this type, there is always some sleight of hand involved in these types of debates. If I remember rightly, the sum painted on the side of the bus indicating what the UK paid too the EU each year took no account of the subsequent rebate which arrived later so the impression was given, deliberately, that the ‘sent to EU’ figures was the same as ‘contribution to the UK’ which it was not. To bring this row up to date, we now know that Office for Statistics Regulation is ‘looking into Rishi Sunak’s claim over Labour tax costs. It comes after the prime minister alleged repeatedly that Labour have a £38bn black hole in their financial plans, which will cost households £2,000 each. Labour frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth told Sky News today that Mr Sunak had resorted to ‘desperate lies’ with the allegation. In response, the Conservatives insisted their claim was based on ‘clear Labour policies, their own costings or official HMT [His Majesty’s Treasury] costings using the lowest assumptions’. However, doubt was also cast on Sunak’s claim by a senior Treasury civil servant, who wrote to Labour to warn them that the Tory assessment of their tax plans ‘should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service’. The OSR watchdog said it was looking into the claim but stopped short of saying it was launching a full-on investigation. One is tempted to quote the saying attributed to Churchill that ‘a lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on’ but the spirit of this observation may indeed go back to the Roman author, Vergil centuries beforehand. When all is said and done, I am rather saddened by all of this. Politics is always a bit of a dirty game but when standards of integrity starts to slip so that one party feels that it is obliged to lie as much as the other side then an enormous cynicism comes over the electorate who tend to opine ‘that they are all the same’ If this view prevails, then the political process as a whole gets so demeaned that any kind of more progressive politics becomes more and more difficult to attain. I do get the feeling these days that we need a reset of our political process and although in the past I have not been enamoured of proportional representation, I am beginning to feel that the case for this is becoming stronger by the day. But of course, one has to ensure that in any new voting systems, one does not give power to extremely small parties for whom hardly anyone has voted but who can hold the balance of power in tight elections.

Meanwhile, the news from the other side of the Atlantic continues to dismay. There are new reports that Jo Biden’s cognitive decline is rapidly accelerating which does not bode well for the presidential elections in November. But there are equally prominent reports that Donald Trumps bizarre behaviour and frequent rants are a sign of his mental instability. So we have the bizarre situation in which the two front runners for president of the United States leaves one to doubt whether either one of them has the cognitive and emotional capabilities that one might expect in a leader of the ‘free world’ It is probably too late in the day but one wonders whether even at this incredibly late stage two candidates might emerge either of whom would ultimately be a ‘safer’ choice as president.

Today started off as quite an overcast day so it was no surprise to us when the rain hit us a little later in the day. The carers were scheduled for three quarters of an hour after their normal start time and were themselves late so we had to have a quick breakfast before it was time for our trip down the hill to Waitrose. We got there at just about the appointed time to discover that their coffee machines had failed again so all they could offer was tea and cold drinks. Nonetheless, the normal five of us were there to chat and gossip with each other and I think it is true that we all make the effort each Tuesday morning unless the weather is absolutely dire. I consulted with our friends as some of the partners in the store and so I bought a collection of little titbits ready for Thursday afternoon when we anticipate that some of our ex-University of Winchester colleagues will be breaking their journey to the North of England and are popping in to see us. On the journey back we had to cope with some drizzle rather than an absolute downpour but it made the journey not particularly pleasant for the pair of us. As soon as we got in, I prepared a mug of packet chicken soup for the two of us and this helped us to come round a little. I think the worst thing about these rainy conditions is evidently that the wheelchair wheels seem to pick up more grit and kerbside debris and consequently the cleaning process takes so much longer as soon as we get into the house. Meg stays still in the wheelchair and I clean up the wheels with a combination of paper and cloths to try to ensure that our carpets are not dirtied by the transit of the wheelchair wheels. But my contretemps with our GP practice resumed this morning. I had received a text from them suggesting that I contact them. Of course I was No. 9 in the queue when I first telephoned and so it took about a quarter of an hour only to be offered a telephone appointment with a Physician Associate and that not today but tomorrow. I protested about this and asked that a fully qualified GP with the relevant degree of experience of working with patients with advancing dementia be more appropriate. I got the feeling that this request was eventually granted but I felt that I was being ‘punished’ a little and now had to wait for two days to have a telephone consultation with a doctor who has treated Meg in the past. So I have a couple of urgent questions to put to the doctor when I eventually get into contact in two days time, the first of these being the progression and treatment of the DVT and oedema in Meg’s left leg and the second the ongoing saga of the reference to the Wheelchair service where I suspect that we are not already at first base. Today is the day when I receive a sitting service for Meg so that, in theory, I can off and do my Pilates. However today, when the carers came mid morning we had quite a complicated scenario with which we had to face and to cut a long story short, we had to make extensive use of the washing machine and I suspect that the two carers had not managed to handle things very well. But the carer who came along for the sitting session was, as the Spanish say ‘muy simpatica’ and she actually had to be called in to help the other two carers. Eventually, we got some lunch cooked and the sympathetic carer helped to give some food and drink to Meg whilst I ate my own dinner which relieved the strain somewhat. I am always desperately anxious that Meg gets some daytime rest, particularly after we have had some lunch. Meg appeared a little sleepy just before lunch but my efforts to induce post-prandial naps (closing the curtains, playing gentle music whilst I attempt to sit quietly and read the newspaper) all seem doomed to failure these days. But I regard it as a relative success if Meg is not having an anxiety attack and is constantly calling out for attention in these after lunch periods even if actual sleep does elude her.

There is news this afternoon of a massive cyber attack affecting the IT systems of several London major hospitals., It seems that pathology results as well as blood transfusions are the services worst affected. This has led to several major operations being cancelled at almost the last moment and the results of the disruption to pathology services means that certain results may take ‘weeks rather than days’ to resolve. Given the interdependence of multiple hospital IT systems, the severity and impact of these cyber attacks is not to be underestimated. Whilst we are often informed that a cyber attack has taken place, we are not really informed whether this is just the result of individual cyber criminals hoping (but never receiving) any ransom monies or whether there is a more sinister and concerted state action which lies behind these attacks on our infrastructure. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive and it remains that the possibility that rogue states can use ‘freelance’ cyber criminals to do their dirty work for them.

The results of the large and complex opinion YouGov poll giving the Labour Party a bigger majority than even that enjoyed by Tony Blair is sending shock waves through the Tories at the moment. What is particular interest, or concern, is the number of prominent cabinet members (perhaps up to a dozen) who are projected to lose their seats. Even Rishi Sunak himself may have a hard fight on his hands in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Normally Cabinet members are sitting on quite large and safe majorities and if they are having to fight hard to save their own seats, then this makes them less available to lend their support to other MP’s who have a bigger fight on their hands. Also, there is now talk which is probably premature of a Tory ‘wipeout’ and if the scale of defeat is what is being predicted, then some of the political heavyweights of the party are being cut off in their prime. Normally, even if opposition parties are in the ascendancy, then the polls start to narrow somewhat as polling day approaches. But July 4th is still some way off and, if anything, the Tories are losing rather than gaining support at the moment.

Today, Monday, the weather started off reasonably bright but it was to cloud over in the mid morning and we expected one of those rather gloomy,indeterminate sort of days. Immediately breakfast was over, I made a lightning trip down the road to get my copy of the newspaper and managed to get there and back within about 7-8 minutes which was practically a record. There was some forward planning in this strategy as once I had obtained a copy of the newspaper, I thought that Meg and I could make a trip to the park which shortens the journey down the hill and back again by about a third in each direction. So having prepared a flask of coffee and some biscuits, we set forth but by a happy chance, our Italian friend was out in her front garden as I was pushing Meg down the road. Although Meg in her wheelchair cannot be lifted over the threshold of her house, our friend brought out some chairs and a little table and we had a very enjoyable coffee and biscuits whilst catching up on the news. It seems incredible but it is now nine years since her husband died and those years seem to have absolutely flown by. So we spent a pleasant hour and then our friend was joined by her gentleman friend so we progressed a short distance back up the hill, only just getting back to the house some 3-4 minutes before the next scheduled visits of the carers. After the carers had made Meg comfortable, I then pressed ahead with making lunch for Meg and myself which consisted of searing some chicken thighs, cooking in the oven in a lasagne type sauce and serving with a baked potato and broccoli. This morning, I had tried to get through to the ‘Wheelchair, Posture and Mobility Service’ to investigate the possibilities of a wheelchair for Meg better suited to coping with the pretty terrible pavements that I have to contend with when I take Meg out for trips. This particular service requires a reference from one’s GP and I had requested some thirteen days ago that such a reference be made. However, when my telephone message from earlier this morning was returned, it was evident that the GP had not made any such referral. So the Wheelchair service suggested that I make contact with the GP (or as they quaintly said, the GP’s secretary) so I got onto the GP practice this afternoon. The admin staff at the other end requested that I supply them with the web addresses that they should contact at which I ‘blew my lid’ explaining to them that it was their responsibility to make an onward reference, they ought to be in possession of the relevant forms and it was not for me as the carer of a patient to be supplying them with contact information which it was their responsibility. They mentioned something about requesting further information from me in a text message which I do not recall having received. As I know from the days when I use to teach ‘Quality Management’, wherever there are failures in service delivery it is nearly always the case when services have to interact with other that problems occur. In other and slightly more academic terms, it is nearly always the interface between services when quality failings are manifest. Such was the case in my dealings with aspect of the health and welfare services as I have detailed above.

A fascinating political development has surfaced this afternoon. Nigel Farage, an honorary president of the ‘Reform’ party (previously ‘Brexit’ and previously ‘UKIP’) had previously announced his intention not to stand for Parliament again (what may be a seventh or even an eighth occasion) and was going to act as a roving agent to help Reform candidates who are putting forward candidates, so they say, in practically every constituency in the country. But Farage has now decided to put himself forward as a candidate for Clackton sometimes known as ‘Brexit-on-sea’ Whether this is the result of private polling which indicates a likely win or whether there is another strategy at work may get revealed in the days ahead. But the intention of the Reform party is to try their hardest to break the present Conservative party and try to ensure that whilst they themselves might not gain any seats, that they draw sufficient votes away from the Conservative vote to ensure that they lose the seat. The intention then is to effect a radical transformation of the Right in this country and for ‘Reform’ to practically take over the present Tory party. Another part of this strategy is to press with other smaller parties (Greens and so on) for a form of proportional representation which is the only way that Reform could ever actually get into government in any shape or form. In case this sounds utterly fantastical, Farage is making common cause with Trump and in the US, the Trump movement have completely taken over the Republican party which helps to explain why Trump will almost gain the Republication party nomination for president. So if Farage manages to emulate what Trump has achieved on he other side of the pond, then perhaps the Reform strategy is not as far fetched as it sounds. One wonders as well, what the impact of AI, fake news and the social media might be on the fortunes of the Reform party. At the moment, Reform are, I believe, ahead of the Liberal Democrats in the polls. An important poll is to be published on Sky News in the late afternoon and this indicates that projects a Tory wipeout in large parts of the country, a Lib Dem surge and the Scottish National Party losing over half its seats in Scotland, if the election were being held right now. The poll has Labour on 422 seats, up 221 compared to the 2019 results based on new constituency boundaries. This is the highest number of Labour seats on record, and a much bigger majority than anything else since the Second World War.

As it is a Sunday morning, we swing into the appropriate routines. The carers call earlier on a Sunday but today only half and hour compared with the hour earlier which has been the pattern for the last couple of weeks. I texted our University of Birmingham friend and we agreed to meet in the park at about 11.00am and then we set off down the hill, on quite a beautiful day, to get our copy of the Sunday newspaper. Then we made our way to the park and I had taken with me a variety of biscuits, some coffee in a flask and a ‘smoothie’ for Meg. She quite enjoyed the smoothies which I must admit is nicer on a warm day than a flask of coffee. Our friend turned up and we chatted about this and that. Just before we left, we bumped into one of our ‘park friends’ that we used to see almost every day when we were in full COVID mode and walking down to the park every single day. This gentleman has a wonderful looking dog which is actually a cream coloured labradoodle but the log looks incredibly sheeplike (and our friend tried to pass it off as a sheep when he entered one location where dogs were not permitted) Our friend is a natural wit and told me of a story of his youth. He had gone into a chemist and enquired whether or not they sold a potty for babies. The shop assistant said ‘Have you tried Boots?’ whereupon our friend replied that he had but this was not very satisfactory because everything keep leaking through the lace holes. The point of the story was that the shop assistant had no idea what he was talking about and failed to grasp the point. So then, Meg and I started our journey up the hill but we soon stopped outside a friend’s house who was busy in her garden. These church friends have had to remove a row of conifers bordering their property as the roots were effecting the foundations (I always thought that conifers had a ball shaped route and therefore did not threaten foundations in the way that other trees could do) I think it is said that a tree’s roots can extend laterally as much distance as the tree is tall but I may be wrong about this. Quite shortly, they were having to have some remedial work done on their house which involved propping up various rooms with steel beams and goodness knows what else. The disruption was going to be tremendous and they were not looking forward to it one little bit but I told them they could always escape and come round and spend an afternoon with us. Then we made our up the hill and started to think about our Sunday lunch. I seared off some skinless chicken thighs and then popped them into the oven with half a jar of a lasagne type white source. Then I baked a potato and prepared some leeks which got parboiled to be put into the oven to accompany the chicken. I also made some onion sauce of which I was pleased to see that I had one or two packets in stock. On Sundays, Meg treat ourselves to the next episode along of ‘Pilgrimage’, the first series centering on Portugal and the second on North Wales. This third series was a journey though the Scottish highlands with the ultimate destination of Iona and the Ionian community there. The ‘pilgrims’ are always selected to have a diverse series of faiths and none – represented in the current series was a Sikh (the cricketer Monty Panesar), a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, a pagan and I forget the rest. But the interesting thing about this series is that the participants are evidently undertaken a physical journey and for some an emotional and spiritual journey as well. At the end of the pilgrimage, they have all discovered something about themselves and felt the whole pilgrimage was worthwhile.

In the mid afternoon, our son popped round and this is always nice because it helps to divert Meg and to break up the day. But today, what with one thing or another, I have not even had time to glance at the Sunday newspaper headlines as these days, despite my best efforts, I do not seem able to induce Meg to have a nap in the middle of the day as I used to do. For a few weeks, we had a routine that Meg would sit on our little two-seater settee and then I would darken the room and play some ClassicFM quietly in the background and this seemed to do the trick but now it does not seem to work at all. In the election campaign, news is reported this afternoon of a Tory candidate who is being investigated by the police for possible election fraud. Police are reviewing a Conservative candidate’s campaign adverts after receiving allegations of election fraud. Robert Largan, who is fighting to keep his High Peak seat, has published a number of campaign materials in the colours of Labour and Reform UK. His election materials are designed to suggest that the Labour Party is supporting his campaign and of course stealing the colours of a rival party can be seen as problematic. When Andy Street was fighting to be the mayor of the West Midlands, he managed to largely keep ‘Conservative party’ out of his election materials but he was still pipped to the post by the Labour candidate. Investigations by the police in matters such as this rarely amount to anything but it is a sign of the times, and the desperation of some candidates, who know that hey have a very tough fight on their hands. Insofar as we can tell at this stage, the opinion polls if they are moving in any direction, it is in favour of the Labour Party and against the Tories. But the opinion polls do not actually tell us what is happening at the constituency level which is often where the real excitement happens to be.

We had a slightly disturbed night last night as Meg woke up at about the time that I was coming to bed. I hoped that we were not going to have a disturbed night but I gave Meg a beaker of a ‘smoothie’ which I had to hand and then we both settled down to a night’s sleep. This morning was a beautiful bright day and although Meg was a little sleepy first thing this morning, she came round a bit after breakfast. We had got Meg hoisted into her ‘going out’ wheelchair and had no hesitation in setting out to meet with our Saturday friends at a little after 10.00am in the morning. We had a full complement of five of us altogether this morning and, fortunately, I had with me the remnants of my chocolate birthday cake which I was saving for one of our friends but the combination of myself, our friend and cake had not managed to coincide until today. It transpired that the same friend was an avid Radio4 listener so we spent a merry few minutes testing out our memories of the various Archer’s characters. I asked our friend if she could remember the names of Dan Archer’s very first dog and this must be in an archive somewhere. My own researches only indicate that Dan trained a dog during his own retirement and the dog was called ‘Nell’ but I have not managed to find the names of Dan Archer’s first dog. I was amazed to discover on the internet, though, that there is an archive with details of all of the animals, and their owners and their eventual demise that appeared in the Archer’s scripts over the years.

As I was preparing the vegetables for lunch today, we looked at what might be offered on the BBC i-Player. In the run up to ‘D’ day which is to commemorated on 6th June as it is the 80th anniversary, there were various films about the planning for, and the operation, of ‘D’ day itself. As I was busy preparing lunch, I only got snatches of the programmes themselves but in one of them, some of the now very old soldiers were mourning the loss not only of their fellow soldiers in arms but also their profound regrets at the loss to French life which was the collateral damage at the time. The other thing that I learned was that after the disaster of an attempted invasion at Dieppe two years earlier, the Allies realised that planning for ‘D’ day itself had to be extremely thorough and meticulous. Extensive use was made of Spitfires flying at incredibly low levels across the beaches to build up an aerial reconnaissance of the myriad of defences that the Germans had been busily constructing. As it turned out, ‘D’ day was to be the biggest amphibious landing in World history. The casualty rate was both high and difficult to calculate. While casualty figures are notoriously difficult to verify—not all wounded soldiers are counted, for example—the accepted estimate is that the Allies suffered 10,000 total casualties on D-Day itself. The highest casualties occurred on Omaha beach, where 2,000 U.S. troops were killed, wounded or went missing; at Sword Beach and Gold Beach, where 2,000 British troops were killed, wounded or went missing; and at Juno beach, where 340 Canadian soldiers were killed and another 574 wounded. The military commanders knew at the time that the cost in human lives was going to be enormous but there was a realisation that a land based invasion was the only way in which the war could be ended.

The general election campaign is trundling along and although I am committed to the political process, I am starting to wonder whether the campaign is already scheduled for too long. I refreshed my memory and confirmed that there was an election that was called and done and dusted within three weeks whereas we are having five weeks. Most of the academic studies reveal that opinion polls do not move much during the course of a campaign. This could be because the electorate has made up its mind weeks or months ago – or it could be that there are an equal number of ‘switchers’ on both sides. I still think that the most interesting thing about this election is not who is actually going to ‘win’ as such but what the results of individual contests turns out to be. Yet another Tory MP has left the fight, even though he was campaigning for a Tory victory only a matter of days ago. In their heart of hearts, even the most ardent Tory MP must realise that the party is going to get a bashing and a long period in opposition beckons. The Tory party is used to be in power and I wonder how many MPs will dedicate themselves to the arduous task of opposition. Once the Tory party has ‘lost’ the election, there will be doubt be a change of party leader and then a period of blood letting whilst the battle for the soul of the Conservative party will continue. It never ceases to amuse me that members of political parties always seem to think that they were not successful in their individual contests because they had failed to be sufficiently ‘radical’ to either the left (in the case of the Labour party) or the right in the case of the Tory party. When a party is far ahead in the polls as the Labour party is at the moment, there is a temptation to adopt the ‘Ming vase’ position. This refers to the observation that anxious not to make the slightest mistake, the leader approaches his task as he is carrying a priceless Ming vase across a polished floor. Another facet of electoral behaviour that occurs in an increasing use of ‘ad hominem’ arguments (i.e. attacking the personal characteristics and political stance of one’s political opponent) if one side feels they are losing badly. So far, Keir Starmer seems to be the target of many political attacks but the same cannot be said of Rishi Sunak. One of the attack lines, but not in an election campaign came from Harold Wilson, the Labour politician and one tine Prime Minister. His telling observation was ‘I will make them (the Tories) this offer, and they can consider it next week. If they stop telling lies about us, we will stop telling the truth about them.’ This was Wilson at the best of the form he reached when he was Leader of the Opposition. However, Wilson was not completely original because I think the sentiments of the quote came originally from some American politicians. However, the master of political rhetoric was the veteran Labour politician, Nye (Aneurin) Bevan fondly remembered as the ‘father’ of the NHS. I am surprised that modern Labour politicians do not read up on some of his famous attack lines and either use them or adapt them.