So today, being a Monday, we pop into our Monday morning routines. After we had got up and breakfasted, we start to think about our routines for a Monday morning. I whizz down the road in the car leaving Meg to watch the Voces8 (Dutch) group singing Fauré and similar works that we regularly view using YouTube. After I had returned home, we prepared our elevenses and then set off down the hill at which point we enter the park and occupy our usual bench overlooking the lake. It was a fairly gloomy day but one in which the clouds were being drifting away. Whilst in the park, I received a phone call on my mobile from the County Councillor with whom I am in contact who informed me that she thought that our request to the County Council (for amelioration of the absence of a pavement) should be directed to a different councillor. As it happens, I know the colleague very well because he was tremendously helpful to us when we were attempting to prevent the development of the orchard immediately next to our house into a housing development of 18 houses. Just for the record and without revisiting past traumas, if the orchard had been under the remit of Worcestershire County Council more directly rather than Bromsgrove District Council, then the orchard would have received an automatic protection i.e. the development would have been prevented. And for the record, we did win at the planning application on three separate occasions but eventually lost on the fourth occasion. If a developer loses a submission despite their being a presumption of favouring all such applications, then they can appeal, appeal and appeal again until they are ultimately successful. The wider point here is that ‘Nimbyism’ (Not In My Back Yard) may succeed on many occasions but more than not, individuals and communities are not in a position to resist the encroaches of large building firms who can employ KC’s and have larger pockets than a mere individual. So when I returned home, I copied the entire email trail of my contacts with Worcestershire County Council to Councillor No. 2 and I now await a reply and further developments. Just as an aside, I started off this query over a month ago and wrote to a District Councillor who forwarded my request to a County Councillor and then waited two weeks whilst she was on holiday and then awaited a further week before I had our video clip shot and chased again only to be told I should be contacting another person who still has to liaise with the Highways Department. Perhaps no wonder that people lose faith in the democratic process if all contacts with one’s elected local representatives follows a similar pattern.
I then prepared a lunch of ham cooked yesterday, some sugar snap peas and a baked potato, followed as is customary by an after dinner yogurt.
After lunch which was a little delayed, we thought we would some good ‘live’ TV. Republican members of Congress are focusing on the role of the Secret Service, as their frustration and anger grow over the agency’s response to an attempt to assassinate presidential nominee Donald Trump. A House committee hearing will on Monday grill its Director, Kimberly Cheatle -something Speaker Mike Johnson said would make for ‘must-see TV’ for Americans concerned about security lapses at a Pennsylvania rally earlier this month. ‘She has got a lot to answer for. And these concerns are bipartisan’ Mr Johnson told CNN. Ms Cheatle’s agency is charged with providing protection to the president and his family, former presidents, those in line to the White House and other political candidates. Meg and I watched the start of these proceedings wondering what on earth the chief of the Secret Service would say. Under the most detailed of questioning in which Congress members spoke about the man seeing using a ladder to ascend to the roof a nearby building, taking his rifle with him, Kimberley Cheatle tried to make a distinction between a ‘person who was suspicious’ and ‘a person who was a threat’ trying to argue that the would be assassin was the former and not the latter. To every single question she basically gave a non-answer saying that the matters were subject to an investigation within the agency itself and therefore no responses could be made to the Congressional Committee until the Secret Service’s own investigations were complete. It is no wonder that so many members of this bipartisan committee are calling for her immediate resignation.
After Joe Biden has retired from the presidential race, there has been a coalescence of support for Kamala Harris, the existing Vice President to become the new Democratic nominee. But Barak Obama has failed, so far, to specifically endorse Kanala Harris and there is some speculation at the moment that Michelle Obama might be persuaded to enter the race. This is on the basis of he fact that polls show that Michelle Obama could decisively defeat Donald Trump in all of the key ‘swing’ states but the same is not true of Kamala Harris. Speaking personally, I would be absolutely delighted if Michelle Obama could be persuaded to enter the race but the probability of this actually happening is very small at the moment. The Democratic party has several good potential candidates but not one of them wants to set forward to wrest the nomination away from a female, ‘person of colour’ in Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris has an interesting professional history- in 2010, she succeeded Jerry Brown as California attorney general, becoming the first female, Black and South Asian attorney general in the state’s history. In view of this, one of the slogans that has already been bandied about if Kamala Harris does secure the Democratic nomination is that it would be ‘The Prosecutor versus the convicted felon’ and can only imagine what social media would make of all of this if Kamala Harris does secure the nomination. This afternoon, it looks as though some big money is swinging the way of Kamala Harris and thus we may eventually see a quasi ‘coronation’ of her as the Democrat’s nominated candidate to do battle with Donald Trump.