Last night, I did something which I have not done for years and that is to go to bed with a hot water bottle. Normally, one relies upon wives/partners and electric blankets to provide a bit of warmth when you first hit the sheets in the middle of winter but my present sleeping arrangements preclude this. I quickly located our two hot water bottles and had one at my feet when I went to sleep on the camp bed which I have beside the hospital bed occupied by Meg. It made a dramatic difference and I fell asleep with the aid of it in no time at all. Today we had two carers in the morning including the manager who puts himself ‘on shift’ occasionally. The day before there had been an open day at the day centre which the care agency is opening in Redditch and, other things being equal, we would have liked to been there. But the transport arrangements fell over much to the care manager’s annoyance and the weather did not help but nonetheless the open day went ahead but with a somewhat depleted attendance. In theory the mayor and the press were going to turn up to this event but it was a day of some mishaps as the care manager’s partner fell over and broke his hand which necessitated a visit to the hospital. On the advice of the care workers, we decided not to venture out this morning because although the skies had cleared and indeed were blue and sunny at one point, it was exceptionally cold and icy and we all felt that the pavements would have been a too risky to have pushed Meg out in. So we stayed in all the morning but ‘Politics Today’ was screened an hour earlier to make way for Prime Minister’s Questions so we entertained ourself in this way throughout the morning. We lunched on chicken, baked potato and sprouts just finishing before the late morning (now early afternoon) visit from the two care workers. In the afternoon, there was no clear candidate in the film world to be watched so Meg and I put on a performance of Don Giovanni (Mozart) which was a superb production but is somewhat long so we will probably watch it in two halves. The singing and performances were of a very high order and we enjoyed the production which occupied us for most of the afternoon.
There is a report in today’s ‘The Times‘ headlined ‘Life Expectancy in the UK is worst in western Europe’ Now we know that there are a host of factors which underlie life expectancy some of them being genetic. But the greatest cluster of factors are environmental and are composed of factors such as climate, diet, exercise, income distribution, social security benefits, efficiency of the health services and so on. But according to the OECD report, although life expectancy is just 81 years, this puts the UK behind the 81.5 average for the 27 countries of the European Union and last in western Europe. Life expectancy improvements in Britain stagnated in the decade leading up the pandemic and have fallen since. The British data shows the life expectancy. for men at 79 and for women at 83 in the period from 2021 to 2013. This is about six months and three months shorter, respectively, than the ages measured between 2017 and 2019 which were the highest on record. The significance of all of this is that this type of demographic data really does show the cumulative impact of government policy, whichever political party happens to be in power. As if to underline this point dramatically, there is also a report in the same edition of the newspaper that indicates that cutting winter fuel payments is going to push 100,000 into poverty and this fact is acknowledged by government ministers. Official estimates of the decision to strip more than 10 million pensioners of the winter fuel payments have concluded that it will result in about 50,000 older people being in poverty at any one time. To make matters even worse, Labour did not carry out a formal impact assessment of the policy before making the decision. Some Labour MPs are very upset but the risks associated with rebellion are high, such as deselection. Meanwhile Scottish Labour have threatened to restore these payments were they to be returned to power. One does get the feeing that of the £1.5 billion that cutting winter fuel payments is meant to save, by the time various factors have been costed out, the savings might be very much less and (hints of the farmers’ dispute) be not worth the political pain that the policy causes.
There is a report this evening that Mohamed al Fayed may have assaulted 290 women pursuing Harrods compensation over alleged assaults and one suggested figure is 420 individuals who have contacted the ‘Justice for Harrods Survivors’ group regarding allegations against Fayed. If this scale of abuse is confirmed, then this may approach the figure of 500 which is said to be the total number of period abused by Jimmy Saville before his death. When abuse on this scale emerges, then it almost defies imagination that one individual can commit abuse on this scale without significant others being aware at least dimly aware of the scale of it all. In the case of al Fayed, then there must have been security guards who protected his premises from the ingress and exit of young women and therefore they must share a degree of culpability. There are some lawyers who argue that such individuals as security guards could themselves be charged with assisting a rape but of course obtaining proof and then a conviction probably means that these individuals get away with things scot free, as it were. To my knowledge, the police are busy pursuing the cases of those actually assaulted by al Fayed and have not yet turned their attention to his accomplices of which circumstantial evidence that there must be some. The wider question, of course, is how the rich and powerful have the attitude that the force of law is to be applied to the ‘little people’ and they themselves feel free to be immune from the legal processes that seem to apply to the rest of he population.
Suddenly, the world seems a much more dangerous place tonight as there are reports that British made Storm Shadows have been fired at targets within Russia for the first time. I have a terrible feeling that for the sake of one or two missiles, costing about £1 million each that may or may not be shot down and may not cause any damage, the amount of harm that Russia could wreak on the UK (such as by cutting underwater cables) is horrendous. I hope this has been properly modelled and thought about within the British defence establishment but I am personally most unhappy about the steps that the UK has made by following the American policy of the Biden regime in its final days.