Yesterday, Sunday, proved to be quite an interesting day. Meg and I got up after a fairly good night’s sleep and the care workers arrived promptly at 8.00am to get Meg up, washed and dressed. We tend to watch the Politics programmes on a Sunday morning but as I am traipsing to and fro from the kitchen preparing our porridge and toast for breakfast, I often only see the program in brief snatches and such was the case today. However, the evening before I had put our recently purchased beef joint into our new cooking pot and doused it well with some ‘old’ red wine that had been open for a week or so. This I supplemented with some onion gravy and then popped the whole into the oven to cook whilst we went out for the morning. After breakfast, we received a visit from our Eucharistic minister who we have not seen for a week or so now and after she had departed, we were delighted to get a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend. We were delighted to accept his invitation for a coffee down in Waitrose and actually spent an hour and a half in each other’s company which we found mutually enjoyable. We ruminated on the fact that we both enjoy a good argument by which I do mean a disputatious disagreement but rather an exploration of the extent to which you come to a position on the issues of the day by exploring each other’s point of view. Today, for example, we were exploring what we both felt about the ‘Assisted Dying’ bill recently presented to Parliament and we were exploring how we both felt about this issue. After exploring this issue between us, I feel slightly less in favour than perhaps I was some time ago but will feel assuaged, in fact, if the hospice movement receives full and proper funding so that no one should die in extreme pain or discomfort if the end of life is properly managed for them. So then we returned home in time for the late morning carers (who were themselves half an hour late) and then started to think about lunch. Fortunately the beef was not too over cooked as it was cooked with plenty of wine and gravy but then I cheated a little, as time was pressing, and used some of the supplies of microwaved vegetables that cook in about three minutes. I was mightily relieved to discover that the new Denby cooking pot which I purchased in the last week and pressed into service this morning actually cleaned up pretty easily despite having been in the oven for the best part of three hours. After lunch, I had two programs lined up for us to watch in the afternoon. One of these was the rugby match between Leicester Tigers and Gloucester and we watched about twenty minutes or so of this witnessing Gloucester making a flying start. Then we turned to a program broadcast on Channel 4 the previous evening and one that I particularly wanted Meg and I to watch together. It was called ‘Churchill: Britain’s Secret Apartheid’ and we both found it a fascinating watch. It revealed what might be called a hidden part of Britain’s history. During WW2 after the USA entered the war, some 100,000 black troops were sent to Britain outnumbering the local black population about 12:1. The documentary revealed that the Americans wanted to enforce the strict segregation between the white and black troops and also revealed that the black troops were used as ancillary staff (cooks, labourers and so on) in support of the white troops who would be engaged in the eventual fighting. But the Americans attempted to enforce a type of apartheid (with which Churchill felt he had to comply as Britain needed American manpower, firepower and money) The programme revealed how open hostilities broke out between the white and black soldiers with the local indigenous English population taking the sides of the black soldiers against the white. The mood amongst the English locals was that they grateful for the Americans coming to our assistance whatever their skin colour but had no appetite for ‘de facto’ American style apartheid, enforced by the (white) military police. Open battles lasting for hours took place both in Tiger May (Cardiff), Bamber Bridge in Lancashire and the streets of Leicester. It may come as no surprise to learn that several black soldiers (but not a single white soldier) were charged by the military police with a range of offences including several deaths. All of this is available in official records if one knows where to look and full credit to Channel 4 by making a documentary as shocking as this.

The long anticipated Budget is due to be delivered in about 10 days time and, apparently, there is an unusual amount of behind the scenes tussle as ministers desperately try to defend their departments against Budget cuts whatever the official line of the government. On this occasion, the negotiations between the Treasury and individual ministers is quite intense and there is a report today that if there is the predicted rise in the National Insurance contributions paid by employers rather than employees this could bankrupt the care home sector. This may or not be the case and to the outside observer, it is hard to discern how much is the normal sabre rattling and how much is a dire warning of the actual consequences of budget decisions. The newly appointed ministers have a pretty terrible time during these pre-budget discussions as the senior civil servants who actually run the department will judge how capable is the minister nominally in charge of the department according to how well they have done in the Budget negotiations. Normally the Treasury which is an old hand at these pre-budget negotiations and representations will get its way but then ministers are bound by collective responsibility even if they have lost out. As an example of pure political naivety, the junior minister who was holding the ‘Grenfell fire disaster’ brief has been forced to step down because she rather stupidly attended a conference in which one of the major sponsors was a firm heavily criticised in the enquiry and the minister, by her attendance, looked as though she was actually endorsing the actions of the firm. The Grenfell survivors, through their representatives, let their displeasure be known to the right quarters after which Rushanara Ali, the minister concerned, was stripped of her brief.

Yesterday, Saturday, I was just on the point of going to bed when my iPhone sprang into life with a FaceTime call from my sister in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. She had left hospital on Thursday afternoon and so had spent the best part of a couple of days in her new surroundings in a residential home. So far, the facilities and the care staff seem to be excellent although my sister had a somewhat rocky start to her stay when the care staff were not sure how they could her comfortable when she is lying in bed and when the pain intensifies. In addition, my sister encountered a ‘Server error’ when trying to access this blog and so she wondered what was going on. We had a fairly lengthy conversation and, of course, she is in her own room and not on a public ward and so we could chat. I suspect that my sister could do with both a specialised hospital bed (which alters its shape) and perhaps also a specialised mattress so I encouraged her to push for this to be provided for her. I also gave some alternative links to the website of the blog because it may be something to do with the permissions surrounding the domain names rather than the actual server or the website itself. I have managed to get it to work OK and have sent my sister some links that ought to help. In the meanwhile, I was also encouraging her (and the rest of the family) to invest an up-to-date smart TV (perhaps, as we have done a brand-new TV but a lot cheaper because it is the model of one or two years ago) plus a YouTube subscription. Meg and I watch a film or a concert on YouTube and life without it would actually be unimaginable. When the carers called around this morning, one of them was a young girl who had gone off to university but just returned to do one or two ‘bank’ sessions at the weekend. She was suffering from what she called ‘Freshers’ flu’ where youngsters at university exchange rampant viruses with each other so to alleviate her symptoms I gave her a Lemsip which we always have in our kitchen drawer ready for the autumn and winter colds strike. As normal, we walked down into town and had a fairly lively conversation, at one stage laughing so much that the staff from the store wanted to join in. The story of mine that occasioned the laughter was my account of the elderly German tourists we used to see on the beaches of La Coruna in Northern Spain. After more than half a century of bathing topless, their skin looked brown and leathery and I explained that upon viewing them afar, it was akin to seeing a group of old ladies with leather handbags swinging on their chests. Then upon our return home I received a phone call to enquire whether I could assist the one carer in a late morning call to which I agreed readily. The care manager has let me download an app which means that I can read live all of the comments that the carers make on each visit but the app does not, at this stage, give me access to the visit schedules for the day ahead which would be very useful in our case. Last night, Meg was 90% asleep because the ‘put to bed’ call was delayed by an hour and an almost asleep person is so much harder to get undressed, washed and put to bed. This afternoon proved to be rather frustrating. At one stage, the weather looked fair and I thought I would seize the opportunity of giving the front lawn their penultimate cut of the season. But then it clouded over and I thought I had better wait until the threat of a shower had passed. Then the weather brightened up again, Meg started to have one of her agitated spells so my original plan was thwarted as I thought I could not even leave her alone outside in her agitated state whilst I was cutting the grass. So I stayed indoors and did my best to calm her down with an old-fashioned antihistamine a doctor had prescribed on one occasion and which he thought might help to ease spells of agitation in the afternoon. I covered Meg with a fairly large double blanket and put on a Mozart Piano Concerto available to us on YouTube and this worked to a small extent – the lawns, though, remain uncut. I am hopeful that the weather stays bright and relatively warm for a day or so that I can seize whatever grass cutting opportunities present themselves.

Sky News is reporting that Donald Trump has finally outdone himself. His rhetoric has long been extreme but, in campaign remarks as it heads towards a close, it’s more so. Asked about ‘bureaucrats undermining you’ in a second term, he replied: ‘We have two enemies: we have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries….We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary by the military.’ Critics have interpreted the remarks as a threat to use the military against political opponents, even though he would need to be president to try. They accuse Trump of shaping an authoritarian agenda – true, they say, because it is laid out in his own words. To the committed Trump supporters, of course, this is music to their ears and demonstrates why they feel that Trump is the new Messiah who has come to save them from the so-called ‘liberal’ establishment. But how this plays out with the uncommitted ‘middle of the road’ voters in the swing states is, of course, the critical question. Conventional political wisdom is that politicians should moderate their stances in order to try to capture the middle ground. But many observers have commented upon the fact that Trump does not play the political game by the conventional rules – and to some is not regarded as a politician at all. There is an alternative and rather frightening narrative that Trump is attempting to force the middle ground to ultimately back him and hence for the ‘middle ground’ to break into opposing camps with the calculation that there will be more who are persuaded by him than repulsed by him. But if the rhetoric is to be believed, then a Trump presidency may result in mass military action against his own population but would the military obey? In case we think that such madness is confined to the other side of the Atlantic, our own Kemi Badenoch in her Tory leadership campaign suggested that up to 10% of civil servants should be imprisoned for being enemies of the state and thwarting the desires of a future Conservative government.

Yesterday dawned as a fine bright day but the day did not get off to the best of starts. The care agency that looks after Meg sent me a text indicating that the call this morning would at 8.30 and then be cut down to 30 mins. So I got up rather more slowly this morning only to be greeted by two care workers at about 8.10 saying that their rota had been altered yet again. So I had to do a certain amount of running around in my pyjamas which was not the best start to the day. However, as Friday is now the day that our domestic help calls around and we always look forward to seeing her again this morning and to exchange news – she helps to keep Meg on an even keel in the mornings as she goes about her tasks. She was inducted into the translation of our Harry Potter blanket with the Latin slogan and then I showed her the cotton weave blanket, John Lewis quality, which I had previously washed and had airing in our airing cupboard. Our domestic help managed to find a very similar article using the John Lewis website where it sold for over £60 so we were pleased to get one for less than £5 and she indicated that if she had seen it in our local favourite AgeUK suburban outlet, she would have bought it herself. After we had had our coffee with our University of Birmingham friend down the hill, we just about got back in time for the late morning carers and then after they had completed their visit, we started to think about our lunch. I decided to make some risotto again this morning using a recipe which I know works very well (starting with some fried onions, then adding the arborio rice for a minute to fry, then adding the chicken stock, one half of the mackerel fillets and finally topped up with a good dollop of yoghurt and some grated cheese) We made enough for our domestic help to take some risotto home for herself and her husband and Meg and I really enjoyed the meal that we had this lunchtime. In the afternoon, I started to prepare for a long and protracted telephone call with EE to query my bill and to demand the removal of a service which they had inserted which I did not want or need and certainly did not wish to be charged for. But when I was preparing for my telephone call with EE, I consulted the latest bill to find it was at about normal levels and the next bill showed me as about 38p in credit rather than the large amount that they were threatening to take. Quite frankly, it was difficult to ascertain exactly what was going on but it could be that when I bought the new phone over two weeks ago, a bill was prepared which was then amended in the light of the comments I made to the EE staff in the shop at the time but might have taken several days to work their way through the system. To resolve this issue, I am going to wait until Meg is sound asleep this evening and then spend some time going through my accounts to see exactly for what I have been charged over the last week or so. In the meantime, I have another issue that the EE staff might be able to resolve in that the old SIM was transferred to my new phone and a new TescoMobile PAYG SIM inserted into my old phone, only to discover that when I receive a call, I seem to get it on the ‘new’ and the ‘old#’ phone simultaneously even though the numbers are evidently different. However, one of tech savvy care staff who also has an iPhone managed to solve the problem for me (which involved the tweak of some settings as I suspected).After breakfast, we got a call from our University of Birmingham friend and were absolutely delighted to see him in Waitrose as we often do on a Friday.

The recent assassination of the Hamas leader by the Israelis (which by all accounts was a sheer stroke of luck as a routine Israeli parol ran across some victims of a recent a strike) has led to much tougher language from the UK and other European governments. Keir Starmer has said: ‘What is needed now is a ceasefire in Gaza, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, immediate access to humanitarian aid and return to the path towards the two-state solution. That is the only way to deliver long term peace and security; the humanitarian situation cannot continue. And I say once again to Israel, the world will not tolerate any more excuses on humanitarian assistance. Civilians in northern Gaza need food now.’ To use a phrase such as ‘will not tolerate any more excuses’ indicates a degree of exasperation with the Israeli leadership which is almost unprecedented for a staunch ally. This sentiment is probably shared in the USA as well but, of course, the contenders for the presidency dare not say anything that seems to indicate that the USA tolerance for the Israeli prosecution of the war is decreasing. Biden went as far as he dare giving the Israelis some 30 days to open up more supply routes of aid and medical supplies into the stricken areas. But this only seems like a slap on the wrist and, in any case, a period of thirty days covers the period both before and after the American presidential elections. The very stark truth is that far from being a complete client state of the USA, the Israelis are ‘de fact’ being given a free hand to pursue whatever policies they desire. It is now self evident to most commentators that the most right wing government that Israel has ever known will tolerate nothing else except what they define as the complete elimination of Hezbullah and Hamas. But even of they were to succeed in these war aims, Israel still have a range of neighbouring states ranged against them, including Iran, Syria and the Yemen. Even if peace were to be declared tomorrow, the question tat is increasingly raised is ‘What happens on the first day after the war has ended?’ There are two massive questions of which the first is such as what type of government will emerge in Gaza and, secondly, who is going to pay for the enormous amount of reconstruction of an urban society where most of the private and public buildings end in ruins. The same question was asked, of course, after the conflict in both Syria and Iraq and it was plain that no forward thought, let alone planning, had been conducted about should happen when hostilities came to an end. At this stage, all that is left to contemplate is a whole series of refugee camps which may well exist for decades and must be locations where political radicalism and hostilities to the Israeli state will only fester and increase.

Yesterday was an interesting kind of day. Thursday is my shopping day and the carer called around at the appointed time and I prepared to go shopping. But upon my return, about an hour and a quarter later, I discovered that Meg had had a period of acute anxiety whilst I was away shopping and the carer had quite a difficult time with her. Having said that, I think that the carer had coped with Meg very well and had read her a couple of stories and done other things to divert her. But when I got home, Meg was still in rather an agitated condition but very gradually calmed down. After the shopping had been slowly unpacked, it was time to think about lunch and I scoured the freezer to see what could be rustled up as I wanted to save the mackerel I already had out of the freezer until tomorrow. I discovered something with no label but once it had been cooked in the microwave, I discovered that it was actually a ‘Boeuf à la Bourguignonne’ portion I had saved from the last time that I had cooked it as a special meal for Meg’s cousins when I last entertained them.

The news media has been absolutely saturated today with the news of the untimely death of Liam Payne, who shot to fame in the band One Direction, who died at a hotel in Argentina after falling from a third-floor balcony. Payne, 31, was posting on social media only hours before his death. Alcohol and medicines such as clonazepam were found in his room. The hotel authorities in Argentina have revealed an audio, possibly to avoid any accusations of blame, that he had been high on a cocktail of drink and drugs and was trashing his hotel bedroom. He fell to his death from a third floor balcony and when the news broke late on Wednesday evening, all kinds of interviews were interrupted with a news flash about the singer’s death. But at the risk of sounding very curmudgeonly, this was a young man of whom I had never heard, part of a band of which I had never heard and the music of which to my untrained ear sounded nothing out of the ordinary. There was masses of footage, played over and over again of female teenage fans lighting candles outside the hotel where he had perished but the amount of media attention devoted to it seemed to me to be massively disproportionate. This afternoon after we had lunched, I treated Meg and myself to something that I spotted in last night’s TV schedules. As the renowned actress Maggie Smith died very recently, I was not surprised when the BBC broadcast some of her most memorable performances, One of these is the almost completely true story of ‘The Lady in the Van’ which is the story of a derelict old lady who parks her van, which is also her home, first outside and then on the drive of Alan Bennett the playwright, who was living in Camden Town. This was endured for the best part of fifteen years all in all and part of the denouement of the film is that the old lady thought that she had been responsible for the death of a motor cyclist years before and was, in effect, on the run from the police. Maggie Smith as absolutely magnificent in the portrayal of the old lady and the film was both poignant and comic at the same time. After Meg’s carers had called in the afternoon, we treated ourselves to a rendition of Mozart Piano Concerto No 23. This has always been a particular favourite of mine since a 10″ LP was bought for me by my music teacher in about 1960 and I played it endless times. The second movement is incredibly sad and one can almost the tears through the notes. By contrast, the third movement is joyous in the extreme and one can imagine that the metaphorical cheque had arrived in that morning’s post. This was a performance in which the pianist actually conducts the orchestra from the piano which is almost certainly what Mozart himself would have done. This was followed by another Mozart piano concerto (probably 21) and was just as enjoyable.

The political news has been dominated by the assassination (or as the Israelis say, elimination) of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. I learned today that every single leader of Hamas has been assassinated by the Israelis and they are naturally jubilant. I saw an announcement made to bathers on a seaside resort on the Israel coast and there was universal celebration. The important question is whether this brings a ceasefire any closer or not. Netanyahu is saying that the war must continue until Hamas (and Hezbollah) are completely eliminated but I am not sure you can eliminate an ideology. Killing your opponents may be very satisfying to one’s electorate and the military but I cannot see how it advances the course of peace as resentments and recriminations must build up in the generations ahead. Meanwhile domestic politics is intrigued by two stories that are running. One is concerned with the forthcoming budget and whether Rachel Reeves may be able to pull ‘rabbits out of a hat’ There is some evidence that the electorate are being softened up for big tax rises with talk of a £40 billion black hole but on the other hand, there may be some plans afoot to sweeten the pill somewhat. The other interesting story concerns the backwoodsmen of the current Tory Party. A Tory MP has suggested Kemi Badenoch won’t have time to be an effective leader of the opposition because she’s a mum of young children. Sir Christopher Chope told ITV Meridian’s ‘The Last Word’ she is ‘preoccupied with her children. You cannot spend all your time with your family at the same time as being leader of the opposition’ he added. One can only imagine the derision about the voicing of such attitudes and naturally the Labour party and others are piling in gleefully to denounce such remarks – and, of course, Tories are put into a position where they either have to defend their colleague or effectively to disown him or to distance themselves from such remarks. Incidentally, similar remarks were never made about Margaret Thatcher when she had young children, as I am sure that many will now point out but, of course, Margaret Thatcher could afford to employ a full-time nanny, so that is all right then.

It has been an interesting day for economic news which is mixed. On the positive side, the rate of inflation has dropped from about 2.2% to 1.7% which is much bigger drop than predicted. This news will be particularly welcomed by the government as the September figure is the one that is used to uprate some benefits next April and this lower rate of inflation will lower the total bill. It also makes a decrease in the Bank rate slightly more likely as well. The more grim economic news is that the £22 billion black hole that the government argue is the legacy left by the last Tory government has just grown to £40 billion. The government is saying that this increased figure is necessary to ensure that deep cuts are not made to departments across the board. It might be that Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, will be able to magic up some money when she presents her budget in two weeks time. There is some talk of a highly technical nature of calculating government debt in a slightly different way that gives the government some unspecified billions to play with. I seem to remember that George Osborne when he was Chancellor managed to find £8 billion from the back of the proverbial (government) sofa and Rachel Reeves may be trying to emulate this. But it is a cast iron certainty that there will be pain for higher level tax payers when the budget is announced and adjustment to the ways that pension ‘pots’ are taxed may be the clue here. Historically, we may be aware of the famous quote attributed to Louis XIV’S finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who famously declared that ‘the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.’ When it comes to taxing companies, a modern finance minister might rephrase this as ‘the largest possible amount of revenue with the smallest possible amount of economic and political damage.’ If we had to find new sources of revenue, I have thought it should have been possible to have taxed each Amazon delivery by a small amount. You would have thought it was easy to have found the number of deliveries that Amazon make in the UK each year but if the information is out there, it is really obscured. I have managed to find out share of the market, global figures including the USA but a simple figure like UK deliveries evades me. On a conservative estimate based upon sales, though, I should think that 50p on each of £20 billion of UK deliveries would generate £10 billion whereas a 1p increase in income tax, by way of comparison, would generate approx £5 billion in revenue. These are very much back of the envelope approximations but one gets the idea. After breakfast, which was a little delayed this morning, we decided just to make a quick trip down to Waitrose to pick up our newspaper and a supply of milk. We were delighted to bump into our Irish friend whose husband was having an investigation under general anaesthetic yesterday morning. But his wife informed us, to our delight, that she had got him home safe and sound at 1.30 in the afternoon, the procedure had gone well and her husband was not in any pain or discomfort afterwards which is surely a relief all round. Our friend also kindly gave me a rainproof guard that I can put over Meg if it comes on to rain very hard when I am pushing her down the hill.She does get wrapped up quite warmly with our huge and newly acquired Russian military blanket across her knees, a windproof and rainproof jacket on, a Manchester University scarf dating back to 1965 and a little multi-coloured crochet blanket across her knees which Meg likes to poke her fingers through. When we got back, the carers came for their late morning call and the to the younger ones who have read any of the Harry Potter stories of J K Rowling, I show the Hogwart’s blanket (now used as a decoration on the back of our sofa) and explain the meaning of the four word Latin motto of ‘Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus’ (‘Never tickle a sleeping dragon’) The carers often joke with me that they always leave the house just that little bit wiser than when they entered.

We lunched on the remains of the spicy chicken with a baked potato and some broccoli finished off with some nicely flavoured yogurt. Over lunch we idly popped onto YouTube and were delighted to continue the viewing that we had of ‘The Genius of Mozart’ which we had started viewing yesterday but the viewing was interrupted by a call from the carers. I always learn something new about the life of Mozart and I learned a little more today about ‘The Magic Flute’ which does not have the wit and sophistication and, dare I say, political undertones of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ (which had to be taken off after only nine performances as the portrayal of servants getting the better of their aristocratic masters made the Viennese audience of the time rather uncomfortable) In ‘The Magic Flute’ specifically written for a German audience but knowing that the skill set of the orchestral members was not of the highest, Mozart deliberately made much of the score less demanding so that it would not be beyond the capabilities of the orchestra playing for the opera. Yesterday afternoon, we noticed on YouTube a quick advert for the J B Priestley play ‘An Inspector Calls’ and although we have seen it lots of times before, we never fail to enjoy it. This play is a favourite with amateur dramatic companies because all of the action takes place in one middle class dining room but the play is gripping in its intensity. The author, J B Priestley, makes no pretence of his socialist leanings as he ruthlessly strips away middle class pretensions and hypocrisy. I mentioned it to some of the carers who knew of the play because they had read it at school and, indeed on YouTube, when the viewing was ended there were some other offerings such as ‘Pass Notes’ to help teenage viewers make intelligent comments upon the play in subsequent examinations. I find it interesting to note that sometimes Meg can get well and truly absorbed in these quite detailed scenarios that we view in the afternoon including a viewing of ‘Room with a View’ with an outstanding cast that we viewed recently on ‘Film on 4’ catchup under the Channel4 banner on our smart TV.

Yesterday being Tuesday, Meg and I pop into our nomal ‘Tuesday’ routines. Earlier this morning, I had seen my son and communicated the latest bit of family news to him. My sister who has contracted COVID has been moved to a specialised COVID bubble where she was visited by suitably masked and gowned daughters last night. She texted me to say that her symptoms were not severe at this stage and she actually felt worse several days ago before a diagnosis had been made. I had a restless period in the night but took the opportunity of getting some documents printed off and occupied myself with a bit of internet browsing. After breakfast, Meg and I popped down the hill to meet up with our three Waitrose friends. Afterwards, as Tuesday is a ‘sit’ day, I popped out for 20-30 minutes and visited our small local AgeUK shop which is not on the High street and bought a beautiful Denby 3 pint oven pot with lid in which I can cook stews and soups in the winter months ahead. I am bringing our soup maker back into commission these days but need to remember exactly the mix and the programs which have proved to be successful in the past.

One would have thought that after the spate of riots by the far-right over the summer months, these were completely home grown demonstrations. But an investigation by Sky News has revealed that much of the mis-information spread onto the internet came from a continental source. In a business park on the edge of town of Strasbourg, Silvano Trotter runs a successful telecoms business but he spends much of his time posting online. He came to prominence during COVID, publishing anti-vax posts, and getting banned from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, before subsequently being reinstated on Elon Musk’s rebranded X, where he posts mainly about immigration. When the Southport stabbings happened on 29 July, he posted false information to the messaging app Telegram that they were carried out by an immigrant who had arrived on a small boat and gave the false name Ali Al Shakati. Our investigation shows that his post was one of the most influential of any of those making similar misleading claims on Telegram. Silvano Trotta’s post spread misinformation about the Southport suspect’s names and he shrugs it off when I point out that this was entirely false. He has worked with Prose, an open-source intelligence start-up, to understand the online conversation around Southport on Telegram, the app where the stabbings were discussed, the narrative was developed, and the riots were organised. Prose monitors more than 10,000 extremist and conspiracist groups on Telegram, every day collecting and archiving everything they post. Together, we looked at how active those groups were around Southport, starting on the day of the stabbings and for two weeks afterwards, looking at 11,051 total messages from 1,496 different chats and channels. And what we found belies the idea that this was just a British reaction to a British issue. Out of the top 20 most influential accounts, in terms of reach, views and interaction, only six were from the UK. The rest were based abroad. Out of the top 20 most influential accounts, in terms of reach, views and interaction, only six were from the UK. ‘While all the action is happening on the ground and people in Britain are dealing with the consequences of this misinformation,’ says Al Baker, managing director of Prose, ‘the people stoking the violence, the people flooding Telegram and other platforms of misinformation are largely based outside the UK.’ What it shows is the nature of the new far-right – not a tightly organised hierarchy based in a specific location, but an international network of influencers and followers, working together almost like a swarm to stir up trouble. And it is extremely worrying for the security services. The head of MI5 Ken McCallum last week told Sky News that, compared to traditional radicalisation, the extreme right instead relies on a ‘pick and mix ideology’ where people pull on hatred and misinformation from mostly online sources. Rather than specific organisations, it is, he said, a ‘crowd-sourced model’.

We are now just three weeks away from the American presidential election and it looks as though the already close race is tightening still further. The poll of polls still puts Harris marginally ahead of Trump by about 2.4 percentage points but this seems to be down compared with a lead of about 3.5 percentage points about a week ago. All of this is within sampling error as well because historically these presidential polls could be ‘off’ by as much as 4%. In the seven swing states, it appears that Harris is marginally ahead in four of them but Trump in the other three. One gets the feeling that the final result will be decided by just a few voters in a handful of electoral districts in one of the seven swing states.The abortion issue still sways voters in the Harris direction whilst the general state of the economy and feelings about the economy incline voters towards Trump. It looks as though economic issues may be losing Harris some voters amongst the young Hispanic and Black male populations where Trump seems to convince voters that he has a better handle on economic issues. This whole election is filling me with a certain degree of foreboding. As the result gets tighter and tighter, then the number of contested decisions and appeals against the result will grow and grow. This may mean that the actual outcome of the election will not be known for several days as recounts and retabulations take place. Even if Trump were to lose by the narrowest of margins, this would never be accepted by the Trump ‘shock troops’ on the ground who would cry ‘foul’ with the loudest of voices and it is not inconceivable that some of the election officials, more and more drawn from the ranks of the Republican party, may attempt to ‘bend’ the result in Trump’s direction. In the last three weeks of the election campaign all kinds of unpredictable things might happen. For example the recent hurricanes sweeping across Florida might just play out in Trump’s direction if some voters believe his claim that hurricane relief funds are being diverted towards recently arrived migrants.

Yesterday being Monday, we think it is probably a good idea to make a trip along the High Street and do a little shopping whilst making our way to ‘The Lemon Tree‘ All seemed to go well with our shopping and we had our favourite bacon sandwich in the cafe before we needed to make off for home. But before we did, we could not resist a quick peek inside the AgeUK furniture store. Within it, I did discover though an interesting blanket inscribed with a Latin motto which was ‘Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus‘ Of course, aficionados of popular culture will immediately recognise this as the motto that was chosen for Hogwarts Academy in the famous Harry Potter series of books. It it popularly translated as ‘Never tickle a sleeping dragon’ but a somewhat more grammatically accurate translation would be ‘Sleeping dragons should never be tickled’ I wondered if this was all meant to be an elaborate joke but found, on the web, J K Rowling’s own thoughts on the subject: ‘You know the way that most school slogans are thing like persevere and nobility, charity and fidelity or something, it just amused me to give an entirely practical piece of advice for the Hogwarts school motto. Then a friend of mine who is a professor of classics – my Latin was not up to the job, I did not think it should be cod Latin, it is good enough for cod Latin spells, that is they used to be a mixture of Latin and other things. When it came to a proper Latin slogan for the school I wanted it to be right, I went to him and asked him to translate. I think he really enjoyed it, he rang me up and said, “I think I found the exactly right word, ‘Titillandus'”, that was how that was dreamt up.’ So there we have the definitive answer as it were. Having got the blanket home, I put it into the washer for a normal wash but then as it was 100% polyester, I made sure it was dried using the coolest of settings and the shortest of times in the dryer from which process it seems to have emerged unscathed.

But on a more serious note, I also was the recipient of some not very good news by text. My niece had previously sent me a link to the residential home in Knaresborough where it is hoped that my sister would take up a place on Wednesday next. But the text I got informed me that now my sister has COVID, acquired no doubt since she has been in hospital which she entered last Tuesday so it has taken about 4-5 days into her stay to acquire the infection. I do not know my sister’s vaccination status although I am pretty sure that she would be up-to-date in this so I earnestly hope that the infection is both mild and easily treated. However, this is bound to delay her entry into the residential home until she tests clear and this must be a period of several days but I am not sure how long. I am in contact with my niece about other sequelae from my sister going into residential care so I will have to wait for some more up-to-date news in that direction.

For Meg’s teatime call, one of the managers who regularly undertakes a shift came on duty along with another of the more regular carers and he imparted some interesting news to us. The care agency company is starting to expand its operations by opening a day centre and the manager wondered if I would be interested. Meg would be picked up in her wheelchair some time after 9.00am and then the day centre would operate from 10-4. During this time there would be a good ratio of carers (1 to every 3 clients), they would be given lunch and a lot of activities organised before being brought home at 4.00pm. I put this idea to Meg when she was in one of her more lucid moments and we thought we would give it a try. Although there is a charge for the day, some other slots would be released e.g. my shopping slot, my Pilates slot so this would help to finance most of the additional cost. I am going to email the manager to indicate our willingness to participate, if only for a trial basis, and to ask him to firm up some of the costings for me as well. So this might be an interesting development and if Meg can stand the separation from me and enjoys the day, this must be all to the good. I also informed the care manager about my sister’s COVID diagnosis and he informed me that when this happens locally, there needed to be two clear consecutive days when one is tested negative before discharge from hospital could be contemplated.

The big political news of the day is the way in which the Labour Party is trying to woo international investors with a big conference for global investors. The government may be moderately pleased with today’s results as the Chancellor was able to announce that some £60 billion of inward investment had been promised (but, of course, might not materialise) What I found more disturbing is that the Government were advertising that they abolish a lot of regulatory red tape in order to attract this international investment. But it was this just this lack of regulation and enforcement that led to the Grenfell disaster from which it appears that the government has not learnt. So far, the Labour government is making exactly the same noises and inducements to investors that a Tory government might make but one would have thought that a Labour government should have seized the opportunity to underline the fact that some regulation is in the best interests of everyone, not just accepting the fact that regulation is automatically problematic and ought to be minimised. Some of the big international investors are arguing that an over regulated economy is inimical to big inward investment but it is hardly surprising that this is their argument when they see potential profits being reduced. Whether regulation does cause big investment to be restrained is a big question as some of the ‘threats’ may be just a sort of grandstanding that are not meant to be taken incredibly seriously but can be seen as a sort of negotiating stance with the government of the day. In terms of international regulation, the UK economy probably comes in the middle of the pack in any case.

Yesterday, being Sunday, we pop into our normal Sunday routine. I have been asked to be the ‘second care helper’ to assist the one (rather than two) care workers who get Meg washed, up and dressed in the mornings but at least I was forwarned about this and I like working with the allocated care worker (who is undergoing nursing training) in any case. It has always struck me that handling patients as a care assistant in a care agency is an excellent way of getting literally hands-on experience that must make nursing studies so much more relevant.

The political world awoke yesterday, Sunday, to the news of the untimely death of Alex Salmond, the one time leader of the SNP in Scotland. He had been attending a diplomacy forum in Northern Macedonia, had recently delivered a speech and was photographed with the other forum delegates. One can only surmise that he suffered a massive heart attack (now confirmed) as he was only 69 years of age. Alex Salmond has been described as the ‘Marmite’ of Scottish politics as love him or hate him, you could not ignore him. The adjective most used about him is that he was ‘monumental’ and in many ways he stood head and shoulders above all of the political leaders of his generation. His later years were marred by allegations of sexual misconduct for which he was tried but subsequently acquitted but this forced his resignation from the SNP that he had led for many years. He founded his own political party, Alba, to continue to campaign for Scottish independence until the day that he died. It was the 2012 agreement he signed with then British prime minister David Cameron to hold a referendum on Scottish independence that may be most widely remembered across the UK as his legacy. Some would argue if it were not for the political talent of Alex Salmond, there would have been no Scottish independence referendum at all in 2014. Whilst the Scots parliament is constituted with a degree of proportional representation, under Alex Salmond’s leadership the SNP achieved a degree of prominence that held a remarkable sway over Scottish politics and, of course, Alex Salmond, was not only the leader of his party but the Scottish First Minister. Tributes have been paid to him from all parts of the political spectrum, including even the King ad there seems to be a universal feeling that no one can quite believe that he has gone at such a comparatively young age. Alex Salmond served as first minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014 and was leader of the SNP on two occasions, from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014. He resigned as first minister after the 2014 Scottish independence referendum resulted in a 55% to 45% vote to stay in the UK. He launched his rival Scottish independence party, Alba, in 2021 after his relationship with his successor Nicola Sturgeon fractured.

After we had viewed the Politics programmes, Meg and I went on our way down the hill to collect our Sunday newspaper. This journey there and back turned out to be more eventful than usual. On our way down, we met some near neighbours who taking care of a dog for a friend and they were taking it for its daily exercise. They had hoped that the dog would do its business whilst out for a walk with them but despite a tramp of several miles, this event had not yet occurred. Then we bumped into our Irish friend and wished him well for the investigatory procedure which he is going to have on Tuesday next. As the day was a little cooler than of late, I had Meg wrapped in the new, and recently purchased, Russian ex-military blanket and she was also dressed in a warm jumper, a Manchester University scarf and another croqueted woollen blanket across her knees. On the way back, though, some of this arrangement started to unravel and the large military blanket fell to the floor (twice). This occurs when we go over the ‘bobbly’ bits on pavements of which there are many so I am going to have to find a new technique to wrap it around Meg somewhat more securely. The journey down the hill is relatively straightforward as apart from a steep uphill section to join the main Kidderminster Road, most of the journey is a fairly gentle downhill.Also, over the weeks, I have no compunction in wheeling Meg down the slip road rather than the adjacent pavement as the tarmac is so much smoother and the cambre more favourable.The journey back apart from one or two severe sections is not as bad as might be imagined as if the slope is a gentle incline, then the weight of my body propels the wheelchair forward, But on the way back and half way up the hill, my fingers start to feel the pressure and to get numb or tingle. To help to counteract this, at the half way point, I don a pair of rubberised gardening gloves and this help a little to relieve the pressure on my fingers. Upon our return, one of the more experienced workers turned up and we both predicted that the second detailed carer would not turn up and indeed she did not. So for the second time in the day, I was detailed as the second carer. Starting from next week, I am going to document each of these instances because they are becoming rather too frequent.

In the late afternoon, I FaceTimed my sister in her hospital ward. Her two daughters happened to be there at visiting time so we managed to have a general chat. My sister is still in a certain degree of pain but looking forward to some respite care in a local residential home in Knaresborough which sounds as though it might foot the bill, being both near her family doctor and not too far away from her two sons. This respite care may well turn out to be a little more permanent but we are taking things one or two weeks at a time. My sister seems to have her mind committed to full residential care as she has lost so much confidence about coping at home, particularly at night when typically there are no care packages available. The costs seem pretty enormous so the family are making calculations about how long my sister’s capital will last before the family home will have to be sold to continue to pay for her care.

Yesterday morning, being a Saturday, we made our way down the hill to meet up with friends in Waitrose. On our way down the hill, I bumped into our Irish friend who reminded me that her husband was due to go into hospital as a day patient next Tuesday. However, he had been asked to take with him an overnight bag in case he needed to be stay in hospital for the night. With a certain degree of black humour, we joked that soon the hospitals would request that you also take with a body bag in case this should be needed after the procedures had been undertaken – but we said that our friend would be in our thoughts and prayers nest Tuesday. When returned home, we did a ‘quickie’ lunch that turned out to be delicious – it was the remains of bits of chicken cooked in a white lasagne and chicken gravy mixture that we served up on a bed of rice, itself enhanced by some petit pois, The whole thing turned out to be quite like a risotto without my starting out with this intention but it was delicious all the same.

The newspapers yesterday were full of the fact that the new Labour administration had been in power for their first 100 days – and the verdict was anything but favourable. Keir Starmer’s personal ratings had dropped like a stone to -33 (disapprove over approve) which is a drop of 44 points since his post-election high, while one poll put Labour just one point ahead of the Tories. A poll out this weekend by YouGov finds nearly half of those who voted Labour in the last general election feel let down so far, while six in 10 disapprove of the government’s record so far, against one in six who approve of the Starmer government. It is interesting to reflect why the first 100 days in office is important and this is for three reasons. Firstly, it sets the tone of what the new government is likely to achieve. Secondly, it demonstrates the momentum of the new administration – when governments have been in office for a long time as the last Tory administration, then they run out of ideas and look tired and jaded, whereas an incoming administration is bursting with new ideas and policies. But the most important factor about the first 100 days is what has actually been achieved. The first 100 days are when a newly elected government is at its most powerful as it has the goodwill from the recently won election to fall back upon and some of the vicissitudes of office have not yet had to chance to hit them. In the case of the Starmer government, there has been one notable success which is the way in which the riots fuelled by the far right swept across the country but some fast and decisive action by trying the perpetrators quickly and putting them in gaol certainly did the trick. But this one success has been completely overshadowed by the perception of sleaze in accepting free gifts from wealthy donors with which to buy clothes and holidays. The Labour sleaze is miniscule compared with the Tory counterpart but in the public’s mind, it feels about the same which is unforgivable. The new government does not seem to have a grip on affairs as is demonstrated by the shambles inside No. 10 and Keir Starmer has demonstrated a completely ‘tin ear’ to the public mood. For a recently elected Labour government to reduce the winter fuel payments enjoyed by old age pensioners, including the poorest ones, and then accompany this by surrounding oneself with ‘freebies’ shows a lack of political disconnect which is astounding. What else are political advisers for if not to issue warnings to the Prime Minister and the power centres of the new government about the public mood and what people are saying on the doorsteps? No wonder that those who support the Labour government and may have wished it well are metaphorically holding their hands to their heads in disbelief.

This whole episode of the early days of the Labour government has reminded me forcibly that governments are at their most powerful when recently elected and I could resonate with this. When I accepted the position of head of a (small) department in what is now the University of Winchester, I appreciated that the earliest days of my tenure were probably the most important to me. The then head of Faculty had made the journey to Leicester before I took up my appointment both to get to know me better but also to stress the priorities that lay ahead of me. It was stressed that the most important thing was to get a Business Studies degree validated and recruited as soon as possible. I had been thinking my way into the role of a Head of Department for many years and accordingly, I set to work in the construction and writing of a Business studies degree very much in my own image. I needed to recruit people around me who shared my image of the future and to sideline those who bitterly opposed my appointment by being the unsuccessful candidates for the post that I was to occupy. To cut a long story short, I managed with the able assistance of some willing colleagues to write and get validated a Business Studies degree which then recruited a couple of dozen students all within my first year. This was an almost unprecedented pace for a small and rather inexperienced college but I had a fair wind behind me and took every opportunity whilst I could. I learnt later that this speed and decisiveness of action excited some admiration, particularly as I was teaching almost a full timetable at the same time. I reflected ruefully that when the college came to establish a Law degree, they recruited a Principal lecturer to write it but he took two years to do it and had no students to teach in the meantime. I offered him the hand of friendship and collaboration when he was first appointed which he declined so I had little to do with him. I did this because in the past, I had taught sociology on the Law degree at Leicester Polytechnic (the CNAA demanded that even a single subject degree had to be ‘liberalised’ by exposure to another discipline) and I shared an office and taught alongside law colleagues on the Business Studies degrees at Leicester and hence my disappointment at the rejection of my hand of friendship. But had I dithered or acted less decisively when I first took up my post, my subsequent career and that of the Business Studies department would have taken a very different course.

Yesterday, Friday, turned out to be a strange sort of day. We knew that in the late morning, we were due a review visit by the social worker who has supervised Meg’s case for the past couple of years together with the two managers from the care agency. Our domestic help turned up yesterday and we exchanged stories of what had happening to us. In the case of our domestic help, she had needed to cope that a friend had contacted her to say that her husband had died in his sleep at not a very old age. We briefly discussed my sister’s situation in North Yorkshire and by the time we had breakfasted a little late, there was no time to make a trip out before the meeting with the social worker. But our domestic help brought along a belated birthday present for Meg, consisting of a scarf with good little pockets built into each end of which I am pretty sure Meg will enjoy. I popped out to get the daily newspaper and our domestic help had very sensibly decided to give Meg a breath of fresh air at the front of the house. She had also brought along some nice pastries from Waitrose so Meg spent a good half hour enjoying the sunshine, reading the newspaper and entertaining the cat (Miggles) who had made himself at home by stretching out in the sunshine at our feel, not neglecting the opportunity to sneak inside the house when the opportunity arose. Our University of Birmingham friend had phoned earlier in the morning and we decided that as time was rather pressing, he would call around this afternoon. So we spent a pleasant hour or so in the sun at the front of the house, regaling ourselves with tea and a pastry our domestic help had thoughtfully given Meg this morning. The afternoon passed so much more quickly when we had the best of company and we spent a certain amount of time our interactions with social work and care agencies.

The meeting with the social worker and care agency staff in the middle of the day turned out to be ‘interesting’ I had requested the review visit because both the Admiral nurse (who specialises in Meg’s condition) and the care agency staff themselves thought that there was a case for a fifth visit on Meg’s care package to cope with the occasions when Meg is very agitated and stays awake for hours after she has been put to bed. However, by adjusting the timing of the late evening medication and adding on some Piriton, we have had a succession of nights when Meg has got off to sleep more easily. The long and the short of it all was there was no extra funding for a fifth visit and although I could go through a long ad complicated review process, the likelihood of ultimate success was small. The underlying message seemed to be that as you are coping as well as you are even with Meg’s declining condition, there is no justification for further support. Paradoxically, if I had pleaded a complete inability to cope, I was at the end of my tether etc, then some extra resource may have been forthcoming but there was no guarantee of this. All of this reminded me rather of the fact that I had been here before. In my 20’s, I was hit at a T-junction by a driver who had fainted at the wheel but the day after fled to the USA. After attempting to sue the individual through is insurance company, the chances of success were only 50:50 as one had to prove that an unconscious person is at fault and all of the legal precedents were against us. One had to prove though, how badly injured one was in order to maximise the likelihood of substantial damages. I actually rehabilitated pretty well despite two broken legs and therefore the amount of compensation was radically reduced. To complete this story, I accepted £2,000 of which £1,400 went back to Leicester Polytechnic leaving me with £600. The essential similarity between the two scenarios of both then and now is that the more one can show one is rehabilitated/can manage then the less the available resources will be. So I am rather left in a sort of abandoned state, but also wondering whether I am subject to a dependency culture and I should be grateful for every element of help that I do receive.

There is a major stand off brewing this evening between a massive global conglomerate, DP World and the government. The government’s Investment Summit has suffered a major blow after ports and logistics giant DP World pulled a scheduled announcement of a £1bn investment in its London Gateway container port, following criticism by members of Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet. Sky News understands the Dubai-based company’s investment was due to be a centrepiece of Monday’s event, which is intended to showcase Britain’s appeal to investors and will be attended by the prime minister and Chancellor Rachel Reeves. In March 2022, P&O caused huge controversy by sacking 800 British seafarers and replacing them with cheaper, largely foreign workers, a move it said was required to prevent the company from collapsing. Announcing new legislation to protect seafarers on Wednesday, Ms Haigh described P&O as a ‘rogue operator’ and said consumers should boycott the company. In a press release issued with Ms Rayner, Ms Haigh said P&O’s actions were ‘a national scandal’ and Ms Rayner described it as ‘an outrageous example of manipulation by an employer’. While Ms Haigh has previously criticised P&O’s actions, the strength and timing of the ministers’ language undermined efforts by the Department for Business and Trade to make the Investment Summit a turning point for the government and the economy. There is a real difficulty here in the way that governments deal with multi-global conglomerates who have massive economic leverage. The way that P&O Ferries operated at the time was scandalous by sacking their long established, generally British crews and immediately replacing them with labour typically from India. Hundreds of business leaders and investors, including representatives of US private capital and sovereign wealth funds, will attend the event in the City of London, as the government tries to drum up billions of pounds in foreign investment to fund its plans. But is the government forced to turn a blind eye to the most outrageous of employment practices in order to curry favour with a big investor?