Yesterday was the day of the crucial meeting between Keir Starmer and Donald Trump and is likely to be one of the most critical meetings possibly for decades. Keir Starmer will try to persuade Trump to provide a backdrop security force to help secure a lasting peace in Ukraine. Trump has repeatedly said there will be no American ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine but a more innovative solution is being proposed. This is that the Americans have a designated ‘strike force’ not actually based in Ukraine but ready to strike (probably with missiles) if Putin were to recommence a hot war either in the Ukraine or any of the other threatened states in the region. This might just do the trick and, in all honesty, Starmer has very few bargaining chips. But one that will be pulled out at the appropriate time is the promise of a full state visit to the UK with a promise to ‘hob nob’ with the monarchy via a full state banquet and walks in the Buckingham Place gardens. King Charles and the rest of the royal entourage are quite happy to go along with this charade so long as it seems to be in Britain’s long-term interest and Trump, via his mother, does have a long connection with the UK. How to deal with Trump is a dilemma. The ex-Australian Prime Minister is of the view that Trump, as an innate bully, only respects force and therefore one has to stand up to him and not be rolled over. On the other hand, it is not difficult to appeal to Trump’s vanity so appropriately applied dollops of flattery may well be applied. I think there is a realisation that Trump himself may be mortal and his own health may not survive a four year term. On the other hand, ‘Trumpism’ may well survive via a successor and if massive tax cuts are delivered to the electorate within the next few years, then it quite on the cards that we may have to endure this period of American isolationism for the best part of eight years and not just four. Michael Clarke, a very respected defence analyst, has asked the question ‘Are now living in a world of new imperialism with three great imperialist autocrats who all want to enlarge their countries. Vladimir Putin has been clear in where he wants to enlarge his country, Xi Jinping has made it very clear he wants to enlarge his country into Taiwan and the South China Sea, and Donald Trump is determined to enlarge his country, He is pretty serious about taking Greenland and about Panama and Canada.’ So, we may well be living in a new world order where the poorest of the world, and this country, may well have to pay the price for an increased spend on armaments as the great powers face up to each other and a new ‘Cold War’ era threatens. In the meantime, we are at least pat funding the increased proportion of spending on defence by raiding the overseas aid budget (of which policy, most of the public seems to approve)

Thursday is my shopping day and after Meg had her normal breakfast of some porridge, the sitter who we know well came along so that I can dash off to my local Aldi. Actually, I make a quick tour to my local Morrisons where there is an ATM and I can park just near to it so it gives me the opportunity to get out some daily living cash, pick up a copy of my daily newspaper and collect a TV magazine guide which, since Christmas, I have been in the habit of buying. Shopping was a relatively quick affair and Meg had dozed during the period of time when I was out of the house. There are blue skies and some welcome sunshine this morning which always elevates the spirit. After I return, I have a quick cup of tea and then start to put the shopping away which always takes quite a lot of time. Then I start to prepare the lunch which is a case of dicing some onions, peppers and tomatoes and then adding some cubed meat remnants and onion grave and some petit pois. I traditionally add some diced apple, sultanas and a spoonful of brown sugar. I serve up Meg’s portion on a small serving of pasta whilst I try to keep the carbohydrate count down by substituting some cream crackers which I break into small pieces. The whole meal is finished off with a dollop of plain Greek yogurt. I almost invariably prepare a little too much so I have pout some on one side which I might consume for a bit of supper once Meg has been put to bed.

Now that the world is trying to advance to a fossil-fuel free future, much attention is being paid the world’s deposits of rare earths and minerals. One of the most important of these is lithium and I idly wondered where most of the world’s lithium was to be found. The answer appears to be in South America (Chile) and also in Australia, China, (which, as you might expect, has made itself very active in this area) Chile and Argentina. Donald Trump appears to be eyeing up the Ukraine for some of its mineral deposits and titanium is much valued for its lightness and strength. The major companies here are China (again), Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan before we come to the Ukraine which currently supplies some 5% of total world production. Ukraine has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals identified by the European Union as critical, according to Economy Ministry data. This includes industrial and construction materials, ferroalloy, precious and non-ferrous metals, and some rare earth elements. Kyiv says these resource represent trillions of dollars of untapped mineral wealth, but industry experts say it could take years for investors to make significant profits from a sector reeling from war and chronic underinvestment.

Finally norovirus is rearing its ugly head again and there are several strains still in circulation. The Department of Health do not know if we have reached a peak this year but it is said to be very infectious and to be quite a severe risk for those with compromised immune systems. We have some hand gel available for the care workers to utilise but I think I probably need to remind the various care workers to use this every time that they visit.

Before the carers call to put Meg to bed each evening, after Meg and I had a little supper and her evening pills, we often flick over to YouTube to see if there is a concert or bit of comedy with which to round off the day. Yesterday, we did this as usual and the first item we were presented with was an MSNBC news channel item about Donald Trump. MSNBC is one of the two leading ‘liberal’ i.e., not right-wing, news channels in the USA, the other being CNN. What we saw was an MSNBC anchor arguing that America always used to be a leader of the ‘free’ world i.e. a force that led the fight against dictatorship and free speech when this was exhibited across the globe. The anchor man was saying that the USA had just abandoned its role as leader of the free world by siding in the United Nations with Russia, Belarus and North Korea in not condemning the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. ‘Trump became the first American president in history fully humiliated on the world stage by instantly getting caught and corrected in his lie (by Macron),’ he continued. But this was not all. The channel then showed whilst Trump was raging against his predecessor for signing such terrible trade deals with Mexico and Canada, it was actually Trump himself, which the videoclip demonstrated, who had actually signed the deals in his first presidency. Keir Starmer is due to meet with Trump in a ‘make or break’ meeting with Trump on Thursday and the political commentators are speculating that Starmer will probably not have the nerve to publicly correct Trump’s rants and lies when we will be subjected to these after the visit of the UK Prime Minister. It is being reported today that a deal has been done between USA and the Ukraine over access to mineral and rare earth rights in deposits in Ukraine which just happen to be quite near the Russian border. At first sight, one would have thought that the Americans had enforced a deal on the Ukraine which was exploitative and massively in the interests of the USA and not the UK. But it might be that the totality of this deal works to the advantage of the Ukraine in the long term as it ties the Americans into a trade deal in which they will wish to protect their investment, and this might act as a deterrent to Russian incursions in the future. The Russians are reported to be unhappy about the new trade deal so having been rejoicing over the past few days that they have got everything they could have wished for in the Ukraine conflict, they now have a cloud on their horizon. Whether this is the case or not may well become clearer when details of the grade deal are actually published and the world as a whole had a chance to mull over it. Mr Trump, however, views the minerals transaction with Ukraine as a fair way to recoup the billions of dollars that the US has given Kyiv – via weapons and financial support – to assist the armed forces in their fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion over the past three years. The document also does not provide a commitment from Washington to give security guarantees to Ukraine in the wake of any ceasefire deal with Vladimir Putin – something that Kyiv desperately needs and has been asking for. The accord, once signed, could unlock a new long-term partnership between Kyiv and Mr Trump’s White House after weeks of increasingly tense exchanges.

This morning, we had a new carer as part of the double that gets Meg up in the morning. The ‘new’ carer was an ambulance worker as well and thus was well used to handling patients of all types and this is evidently tremendously useful in her additional job with the care agency. Later in the morning, our domestic help called around as Wednesday is now her preferred day and I was particularly pleased that she managed to rescue i.e. find, one of my favourite mugs which I had put on a high mantlepiece where I could not immediately see it. This morning, the weather was particularly windy and unpleasant and I was more than pleased that we did not plans to go out today. When I put the bins out this afternoon ready for an early collection and emptying first thing in the morning, the wind seemed to persist and to seem particularly cold to me and my weather app told me that the 24 mph gusts of wind would make the 8° feel like 3°. Meanwhile, there seems to be a backlash developing to the Elon Musk DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) swinging budget cuts. Three different federal judges delivered legal setbacks and slap downs to President Donald Trump in the span of an hour and a half on Tuesday in a series of cases challenging controversial moves taken during the early days of his second term. The upshot of these legal setbacks is that various of the swinging cuts, including to the US Aid budget, have been declared illegal and the cuts are having to be reversed. At the same time, an even bigger scandal is emerging in which Elon Musk, a ‘Special Government Employee’ has been given exclusive access to the whole of US Treasury financial systems, including details of Medicare payments. In theory, this is to root out corrupt payments but in practice , Musk and his acolytes are crawling all over sensitive financial data which is causing utmost alarm in Democratic circles. It must be pointed out that Musk and his acolytes have just been ‘appointed’ to their positions and is akin to opening up a bank’s internal books to a group of friends of the manager of the bank. Some commentators on the MSNBC channel are even suggesting that Musk and his colleagues might have access to, and may be copying, all the social security, Medicare and taxation details of most individuals within the Unites States – and all of this quite illegally. The point is that only Congress can authorise access to these systems and not the President and his appointees and we may be witnessing the biggest data breach in the world. Elon Musk is said to have ‘Read Only’ access to this data but this does not mean that data cannot be copied and then sold on to the highest bidder.The Republicans are absolutely supine in the face of this Trump onslaught as, no doubt, they fear the consequences of opposing Trump as they may face the electoral consequences.

I personally cannot wait for the month of February to be over and for March to commence and, in particular, I am getting impatient for the cold spell that we are experiencing to move away. But it looks as though we are going to have a period of cold winds yet and, of course, as the old expression has it that ‘March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb’.

Yesterday morning we awoke to the prospect of the weather gradually improving and the afternoon the day before seemed to be a lovely spring day, although Meg and I were only looking out of the window. But we have the prospect before us of something approaching spring weather when we anticipate that we will make our trip down the hill to meet up with our friends in Wetherspoons. These days as I keep a careful eye on the weather, I think I am more concerned that it is not too windy and rainy which might rule out a trip in the wheelchair but if it is a tad colder but sunny then Meg can be kept warm with a multitude of blankets. Pride of place goes to an immensely thick ex-military Russian made blanket which I purchased in the autumn, and which is so thick that I doubt that any rain would penetrate it it any case. We witnessed something in the United Nations last night which one imagines would never be seen. There was a non-binding motion which was passed by the General Assembly (i.e. not the Security Council) in which Russia was condemned for its invasion of Ukraine which happened three years ago to the day. The USA voted with Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against the motion which was subsequently passed, and I heard some American commentators who were absolutely aghast that the USA would side with Russia and a few other rogue states in this particular way. Macron and Trump engaged in a carefully choreographed display of public amity after their meeting yesterday but Macron did contradict Trump publicly when Trump engaged in an untrue rant to the effect that the USA had given money directly to Ukraine, but Europe had only dispensed loans. Macron pointed out, with his hand on Trump’s knee(!) that actually the truth was that both USA and Europe had made Ukraine the recipient of both absolute loans as well as grants and one wonders whether when Starmer meets Trump he will also publicly correct some of Trump’s rants.

On a more mundane note, I had to do a quick search to find out when Lent starts this year and it is in a week’s time. This raises the dilemma for me whether I shall give up chocolate for Lent, as I customarily do. I generally find the abstinence from fast cars and loose women is easier for me to bear in the days of abstinence that lie ahead, but giving up chocolate is quite a deprivation. By the way, I wonder if the opposite of ‘loose women’ is ‘tight women’ but let us let that pass. Incidentally, it has always amused me that both the Muslim Ramadan and the Christian Lent have been timed to coincide when periods when food supplies were running short after the winter so there was a theological underpinning for the belt tightening which is associated with these periods of abstinence. This morning after breakfast we set off in good time and enjoyed some almost spring-like weather with crocuses out in abundance and daffodils at various spots along our route. We met up with two of our friends in Wetherspoons but the third is having a bit of a rheumatic incident of some kind and so could not join us. On the way down the hill, I did don a pair of gloves to save my fingers sustaining further cracks to which they are susceptible in the cold weather and then took them off whilst we visited Waitrose to pick up our newspapers and some further supplies. But on my way out of Wetherspoons, I suddenly thought ‘gloves’ but could not remember taking them off and putting them anywhere. On the off-chance I had left them in the store, we retraced our steps back until about 120 yards from the store, I espied one glove. I went a bit further and then discovered its twin that looked as though it had been run over by a car but no matter. I had evidently taken my gloves on entering the store and put them on top of the wheelchair and then totally forgotten them. I could not quite my relief in being reunited with this pair of gloves, not least because they are a good leather pair and not some woollen gloves whose loss could be borne more easily. Needless to say, after this lucky escape, I will take especially good care of them in the future so that I do not need to be lucky a second time. As Tuesday is my sit day, I sat Meg in front of ‘YouTube‘ and the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ before I made a a lightning trip out to a large store which I know sells some cosmetic products of which Meg has a need, and I need to replenish occasionally. Having parked quickly, located my purchase quickly, I was then stuck behind a chap having an argument with the till staff about whether some items were on special offer or not (to be fair, sometimes the in-store labelling is somewhat imprecise and it is difficult to ascertain to which products the special offer pertains)

There are two bits of domestic news, each unwelcome in its own way. Firstly gas prices are to rise 6.4% in April which is a bigger than expected increase- but those on ‘fixed’ deals may be able to avoid some of the initial sting of inevitable price increases. But the more dramatic news is that defence expenditure is due to rise from 2.3% to 2.5% by 2027 – in other words some time in the next 22 months. This is going to be paid for, at least in part, buy cuts in the overseas aid budget. So he various poorest on earth are going to be sacrificed in order to re-arm Britain. Personally, I would have liked a special tax to be levied, perhaps as an extension to VAT, and called a ‘Putin tax’ so that people realised for what purposes the extra revenues raised were intended.

As widely predicted, the results of the election in Germany showed sweeping gains for the far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). Whilst the (conservative) CDU/CSU won the election with not quite 30% of the vote, the Alternative for Germany secured nearly 20% whilst the (socialist) SPD sunk to about 16%, less than the AfD. There is a kind of firewall in place in Germany where the conventional political parties refuse to entertain the AfD as a coalition partner but one has to reflect that Hitler came to power democratically in the 1930’s before consolidating power as the Nazi party. Some political commentators are wondering whether in the next election, the AfD might be able to mount a successful challenge for the Chancellorship of Germany. All of this, has driven me to reflect upon the rise of extreme right wing (i.e. quasi fascist) parties across much of European and American society and, of course, the interesting political question is why this should be the case. The most typical explanation is that voters, and particularly young voters are fed up with what used to be called the ‘Tweedle Dum’ and ‘Tweedle Dee’ nature of politics where despite general elections, nothing really seems to change. One can understand this in the case of European societies that have a form of proportional representation because the majority of governments are coalition governments, take months of negotiation to form and just seem to be a continuation of what went before. Hence the right-wing parties, fuelled by the immigration issue, seem to represent a decisive break with the past. We are witnessing a similar trend in the UK where a right-wing Conservative government has been replaced by a Socialist government with a huge majority, but nothing seems to really change. Once in power, all governments are faced with the realities of power where complex problems (climate change, economic growth, the state of the NHS and public services) are not susceptible to the simple slogans that political parties use to get elected. There is a wonderful phrase associated with American politics that ‘you campaign in poetry but have to govern in prose’. The phrase suggests that political campaigns often rely on inspirational language, idealism, and emotional appeal—characteristics associated with poetry. In contrast, governing requires practicality, clarity, and straightforwardness, akin to prose. This saying highlights the difference between the aspirational, often grandiose rhetoric used to win support during elections and the more pragmatic, sometimes mundane realities of actual governance. It underscores the idea that while captivating speeches can rally people, effective leadership depends on clear communication and practical decision-making. To return to the case of the UK political scene, the actions of the incoming Labour government (such as cutting the winter fuel allowance for pensioners) seem to be the policies that a Conservative party would deploy whereas the Tories themselves, claiming to be the party of ‘low taxation’ have presided over one of the highest tax regimes that the country has ever known. A large part of the disillusionment of electorates with the political system and practically non-existent economic growth for decades can be understood if one looks at the simple facts of demography and the consequences of living in a society where the aged and retired are forming a larger part of society as a whole. When the post WWII welfare state was founded, a young male might leave school at 15, work until they are 65 i.e. contribute to taxes and national insurance for 50 years and then live for another 5-10 years. But today with the expansion of higher education on the one hand and the advances of medical science on the other, a person might not start to contribute to the tax take until the age of 25 (after university education and post graduate training) and then be declared redundant or retire at the age of 55. This is 25 years of contributions which now funds perhaps 30 years of retirement if they live to the age of 85. So, what economists called the ‘dependency’ ratio has altered dramatically and, irrespective of political ideology, explains why our tax burdens are so high and cannot easily be cut. Meanwhile centres of manufacturing have moved to China and the Far East where the problems of demography are not so acute (although, as the decades advance, the same problems will face them as well).

The previous evening, I was particularly pleased that I managed somehow to resurrect the credentials so that I could access the Teachers Pensions Agency website (quite a good one) to check out Meg’s pension arrangements as well as my own. Now that I have managed to do this (and ensured that I have the log on credentials in a secure place) I have been able to send off a query that we have about Meg’s pension to which a reply might be forthcoming in 10 working days time which is in two weeks time. The important thing about all of this is that we now have a record of Meg’s Teacher Number which is important to know to unlock her contribution record. This morning we knew that we had a scheduled meeting with the physiotherapist(s) and with one of the managers of the care agency to see if we could restore some flexibility to Meg’s knees. The physiotherapist who was the same person as saw Meg last time was pretty successful in getting Meg’s legs relatively straight and then communicated the best ways in which this was to be done to the care manager who turned up a little later than planned. The physio was going to write up some detailed therapy notes so that these could be incorporated into Meg’s care plan and then the agency manager was going to promulgate these notes to the rest of the staff so that they would know what actions to perform. So our session with the physios was pretty helpful this morning and I thanked them for what they had done. This now completes this particular session of physio care for Meg and if I needed any further tranches of treatment, then this would have to be a new reference from our family doctor.

I spent a certain amount of time trying to work out (again) how to convert the text (e.g. this blog) into the spoken word. I have used this facility which is part of both Windows 10 and Windows 11 but had forgotten how to do it. After a certain amount of messing about, I got this to work but I am sure that last time I got it working I did it via a separate set of commands. This facility I do not intend to use a great deal but as it is provided by the technology, I need to remember how to use it when I wish. This time around, I will make sure I write myself some notes which are easily accessible when I need them – probably just in an email addressed to myself which means I can find my notes again easily.

Yesterday was a day when the carers were again scheduled to come at 7.20am in the morning which means that I needed to get up an hour and a half earlier – consequently, I do not think that I slept particularly well because perhaps because I was conscious of the fact of an earlier start this morning. We generally do not make a trip out on a Sunday morning as later in the day, we often receive a visit from our University of Birmingham friend to which we always look forward. The political agenda in the forthcoming week is probably dominated by the visit that Keir Starmer is due to pay to the White House on Thursday. There is a consensus view that the UK Prime Minister will have to approach this meeting with the utmost delicacy, expressing warm words for the president in public (for the sake of the cameras) but perhaps informing Trump in private conversations that some of his ideas are actually quite mad, as well as being illegal (for example, emptying Gaza of Palestinians, ending the Ukraine war by appeasing Russia and getting American hands on mineral deposits) President Macron of France will precede Starmer by meeting with Trump on Monday and no doubt the European leaders will have got their act together to deliver a uniform European view. The whole meeting is characterised by an analogy that was used in the run up to the election i.e. a Ming Vase moment when, in this thought experiment, one has to walk very carefully across a room bearing a priceless Ming Vase but frightened to death of dropping it. The Brits always like to talk about the ‘special relationship’ that the UK has with the USA but the Americans never do unless they have been reminded by their own diplomatic staff. In the case of the Trump coterie, I doubt that he words will ever enter their heads and, in any case, the Trump administration is probably of the mindset that Europe if now ‘finished’ and not worth bothering with. Sky News have broadcast a long, rambling and sometimes incoherent speech by Donald Trump full of uncheckable facts and some pure venom and he termed anything in the previous administration pursuing probably quite centrist policies such as the US Aid programme as ‘radical Left Marxists’ In an act of pure vindictiveness, he has denied ex-President Jo Biden any access to government papers which is a customary right bestowed on all past presidents and has threatened to go after any members of the judiciary who had overseen any actions against Trump in the past. So much for the ‘separation of powers’ between the legislative and judicial arms of government.

Mid morning our University of Birmingham friend called around, as is often the case on Sunday mornings. We nearly always have an academic topic that we need to discuss with each and yesterday a lot of our attention was devoted to problems of measurement. We both have an interest in this even though we come from very different academic traditions and we explored the concept of reliability vs. accuracy. I had a vague remembrance of a diagram which explained these concepts perfectly, using the example of arrows hitting a target butt. Fortunately, I managed to find a website that illustrated these points where a measure could be reliable (consistent in the results) but consistently wrong as in arrows that cluster closely together but off the bull’s eye. As opposed to this, we have results that are regarded as accurate but re rather inconsistent. My friend was going to do a bit of reading around these concepts and explore them further with another friend with whom he was having similar discussions. My friend do not mind the fact that this academic interest of ours could be regarded as a little ‘nerdish’ but I recall well the incident were an accountant who was supervising one of our placement students when discussing her work in general was bemoaning the fact that she had no real concept of the approximate magnitude e.g. of an invoice which came before them. He uttered the observation which I have. not forgotten that the student had the facility to be ‘precisely wrong instead of approximately correct’, perhaps because she was one of the generations who had used calculators all of their lives. Actually, when working out anything, it is always a good idea to have an approximate answer to a question so that one is not wildly wrong but in the right ballpark. Towards lunchtime. my son and his wife called round to see us and I explained to them what was happening with the mistaken direct debit issue with Worcestershire County Council. We then did a few experiments to see if I could get my main computer to use ‘Siri’ to locate a misplaced phone and we managed to get this working to get us out of accidental misplacements in the future.

We had some lunch where I was pleased to able to get most of it inside Meg whilst we were watching the Italy France 6 Nations rugby match. Despite Italy being one of the weakest teams in the tournament, they played with a great deal of panache (appropriately against the French) and actually scored two tries in the first half. As a team, they are improving season by season and beat Wales a fortnight ago to mark a new ‘low’ for Welsh rugby. The weather yesterday proved to be very windy and showery, and I was relieved that it was not a kind of day when Meg and I usually take a trip out. The very likeable male Asian carer came around in the afternoon and I assisted him in getting Meg hoisted into her chair in the lounge/bedroom. He was going to goo with a friend to visit an Italian restaurant so we were discussing the type of Italian food in which he might be interested. Steering away from the spaghetti bolognese, I thought he might like to try a Carbonara or, in fact, anything with either fish or mushrooms in it, both of which make Italian food very interesting.

Last night myself and the carers were in some disarray wondering whether or not Meg’s hospital bed which failed to function as it would receive any attention before Meg’s bedtime. The engineer who had conducted the routine test on the bed only about a fortnight before turned up having been phoned at home by the firm responsible for the bed. Actually the village of Catshill is only a couple of miles distant whilst the other on duty engineer was in Stoke on Trent. The engineer discovered that a key transponder unit had failed which meant that the bed could not be raised or lowered but other sections of the bed could be made to work. New unit would take a week to arrive so the carers would have to work with the bed at an intermediate height for several days. Although this whole incident was unfortunate, I was still very pleased to see the engineer at relatively short notice as I only phoned the firm sometime after 5.00pm after we had discovered that it had failed and I am sure we can out up with some inconvenience for a few days. I am relieved that the weather this morning has turned up so much milder but at the price of some gusty rain (of which there is an 18% chance) so I shall have to make a judgement call whether or not to give Meg a quick push down the hill to collect our newspaper. The wind direction might also be a critical factor because if it is behind us on the way back, this is much more tolerable and easier to cope with than if the wind is blowing from the West. The political news this morning relates to the question whether the far-right political leaders in this country, such as Nigel Farage the leader of the Reform party will endorse the oft repeated claim by Donald Trump that the Ukrainian leader is a dictator. Nigel Farage has said Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not a dictator and everything Donald Trump says should be taken ‘truthfully not literally which seems a weasle form of words if ever I heard any. The Reform UK leader also said he did not think Ukraine started the war with Russia and claimed Mr Trump was talking about ‘causal factors’ when he suggested as such. Meanwhile Priti Patel who would normally be a Trump acolyte has agreed with the Nigel Farage view, so we now have the interesting scenario where even the far right in this country safe having to disavow some of the wilder statements that Trump makes. Meanwhile, in the US a prominent magazine an artificial image has been shown of Trump actually wearing a crown and called a ‘King’ which given the broad sweep of American history appears preposterous. Meanwhile on our own continent the Germans are having an election in which the German Far Right (Alternative for Germany) is expected to do extraordinarily well. The Far Right is being assisted by a massive Russian disinformation campaign as well as the active endorsement of the American vice-president, J D Vance and a welter of social media. All of this amounts to as clear a meddling in the internal elections of a European country as it is possible to see but the Far Right has been so emboldened by the Trump presidency that there are no practical restraints on it any more. Finally on this topic, I am pleased to see that the Sky News presenter, Sophie Ridge whose style of journalism I like and admire is now publicly calling for the Trump lies and fulminations to be ‘called out’ which is something that most politicians close to government are failing to do.

It is said that troubles come in threes but this morning the reverse turned out to be true as I had three pleasant surprises in the morning. I had decided it was a bit too windy to expose Meg to the elements so I was just on my out in the car to collect my daily newspaper when I received a phone call from my University of Birmingham friend. We are always pleased to see him so we had an enormously pleasant chat, aided by coffee and some remnants of chocolate cake. In the middle of his visit, the engineer called round with a whole new ‘transponder’ unit (I think they are called) which might or not work in the hospital bed. The engineer fitted the new unit and it worked perfectly so the bed is now fully restored to functionality. Naturally, I thanked the engineer effusively and am so grateful for his prompt attention – and this was the second of the good things that happened this morning. Lastly, I had a canvas from a very nice lady who, as it happened, was campaigning for a seat on the County Council and she has a fair chance of retaining this. Several years ago, I had leafletted for her predecessor (which she did not know) but was grateful for my offer of support in the future (but not the immediate future, because of Meg which she well understood) I told her about the direct debit fiasco with Worcestershire County Council and she was horrified. As it happens, she has very good relations with a County Councillor from the governing party who is in a position to make representations on my behalf. So I am going to write a long email to the lady who canvassed me this morning and she assured me that she would follow it through and make sure that I received some satisfaction in how this particular mistake was to be rectified.

I am cooking a basa fillet for lunch which I discovered lurking in the far recesses of the freezer and I am going to cook it, now that it defrosted, in the same way that I used to cook sea-bream fillets. Doing some reading around the subject, it appears that this fish whilst cheap may be subject to industrial contaminants if farmed in South East Asia, so despite saying ‘Responsibly sourced’ I think I will not buy this product again. The carers are not due to call until way past our normal lunchtime today and I needed to help out with helping the one care assistant this morning because of staffi

Yesterday, we awoke to a temperature of 12° which sounds unbelievable after what seems to be a long winter. But I think this one-off high temperature is a bit of a blip and will not be sustained and presages the start of some windy and wet weather. Thursdays are my shopping days so I will be able to sample the weather first hand when I go out for my weekly venture. The previous evening I had along chat with my University of Winchester friend whose wife is also very ill so we WhatsApp each other quite regularly to exchange news and to give ourselves bits of mutual support. I read this morning that a plan that Starmer is to put to Trump is that there will be a British contribution to a pan-European force which will be deployed not as peacekeepers but as a ‘reassurance’ force to guard major cities, ports and nuclear infrastructure. If, of course, the Russians to withdraw and cease their military activity on any deal that emerges, then such a ‘reassurance force’ would actually have nothing to do but all of these smacks of tokenism to the highest degree. Whether Starmer is able to dissuade Trump from his stated view that the Ukrainian leave is a dictator with only 4% public support and ‘starting’ the war by not standing up to Russia at the time of the invasion is unlikely – the world has been listening to Trump with increasing incredulity as not a hint of criticism of Putin is evident. Eventually, the world will call out the madness of these Trump utterances, but the world leaders seem to mutter their disagreement rather than make the forthright replies of disagreement which is called for. Starmer has spoken with Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader, to reassure him that the world, unlike Donald Trump, does not regard him as a dictator as under wartime conditions, the Ukraine have suspended elections which is exactly what Churchill did in the UK during WWII.

I got my shopping done expeditiously this morning and Meg’s sitter was the young male Asian carer of whom we are actually quite fond. He insists on buying us some goodies from Greggs from whom he orders his own lunch. Eventually he was joined for a normal lunchtime call by another young female Asian carer who has just started work for the company. The two carers had not met before but realised that their ancestors hailed from the same part of the Asian sub-continent. I asked the young carer if she had ever paid a visit to the country from whence her parents originated and she indicated that she came from Bengal. I always thought of Bengal as being a part of India whereas the young worker seemed to identify with Pakistan. When I enquired further about the country of origin of her parents, she told me that Bengal was an independent country ‘ as it has its own flag and everything’ When the carers had departed I did a quick bit of research and confirmed my suspicions that Bengal was not an independent country. But what I discovered was at the time of partition in 1947-48, Bengal as it then existed was split into West Bengal which remained a province of India and East Bengal which became part of the new Pakistan. So I told both of these young people about the partitioning of India and of the book by Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children of which they had not heard. This then raised an interesting philosophical question in my mind as to who bears the responsibility for ensuring that young people are aware of their own cultural heritage – does the responsibility lie with the educational system or is with the parents who might even have the haziest knowledge themselves of their own heritage. In the case of Bengal , one can imagine why there might be some confusion but I feel it is important that young people are taught some of the rudiments of British colonial history and our part in shaping (if that is the right adjective) the destinies of so many people. To elaborate this point, the British did ship workers from the Asian sub continent to work the tea and coffee plantations in places such as Kenya and the Asians developed from this to become the entrepreneurial class of Eastern Africa.

This afternoon, I scoured the TV schedules to see what might have been shown last night that we could catch up today. Channel 5 had broadcast the original of ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ so I thought we would start to watch this but Channel 5 had not made it available to watch just yet. So Meg and I watched a compilation programme that had been made of some of the choicest scenes from Fawlty Towers with some words of explanation and commentary and this kept us entertained until the carers arrived for Meg’s teatime call. Today, I cooked a dinner of the remains of the beef joint from the weekend with some baked potato and green beans and was relieved to see that I managed to get all of Meg’s portion safely within he.

A sort of calamity has hit us late in the day. Meg’s specialised bed had failed to operate correctly which means that it is difficult for the carers to get her to bed because she has to be undressed and washed when the bed is at the wring height. If the worst comes to the worst, the workers will have o attempt this on her knees but, of course, they might refuse. I telephoned the company who have responsibility for the bed and they may be able to get an engineer out this evening or they may not. So this is all very unsettling because I do not know if anything can be done and Meg is generally fast sleep by 7.00pm. Meg has had a fairly awake day today which means she is bound to be tired so we shall just have to see what the two evening carers make of the situation. When electrical equipment of this nature fails, one always feel a little helpless and there is not even a short term fix that I can deploy I tried the ‘reset functions’ that the engineer instructed me in when the bed was serviced a couple of weeks ago but this failed to work. We even tried switching everything off and then back on again and this, too, failed to work.

Without wishing to sound too presumptive, I often wonder what I would actually do if I were the Prime Minister of the country, faced with the problems now confronting us in the new world order. It seems to be particularly ironic that we left the EU and tried to position ourselves as a power between Europe on the one hand and the USA on the other, when it is increasingly evident that we are in for a period of massive isolationism and we can no longer think of the USA as a power that will be there to defend our democracy and European value. In fact, I heard a comment last night n the TV which indicated that in the USA mindset the whole purpose of the EU was just an institution set up to annoy and act as a countervailing economic power to the USA. So, if I were Prime Minister, I would two things almost immediately. The first thing would be to organise a meeting of all of the European finance ministers and organise a joint and Europe-wide increase in VAT and make plain to he electorate that this was an emergency measure to fund the increase in our armed forces that have been hollowed out of late and would have to be especially re-approved by Parliament year by year and would be removed as soon as the threat level from Russia had diminished to some extent. Then I would make a COVID-style address to the nation explaining that we all needed to face a small temporary drop in living standards for a year or so (incidentally forcing the Opposition parties to not oppose these measures) I would explain that it is a harsh truth that London, Paris and Berlin needed to hear as it becomes increasingly obvious that Washington under President Donald Trump is far more interested in going it alone rather than being the big – but benevolent – beast within an alliance of partners. The problem though is that the armies, navies and air forces of the most powerful nations in Europe have been hollowed out since the end of the Cold War as government spending priorities shifted to peacetime niceties such as the economy, healthcare and social welfare. Now, would all of this do the trick or not? The problem is that we need a government full of intelligent, far-sighted individuals who can take decisive action for the next few years ahead and I am not entirely convinced that the present Labour party has this degree of political wisdom in its ranks anymore. Incidentally, now would not be a bad time to get the likes of ex-Prime Ministers like Tony Blair and John Major to at least tacitly, of not actively, endorse the new policies. A government information campaign (ads in newspapers and on TV) could label the emergency taxes as a ‘war’ tax and, apart from anything else, send a clear signal to Russia that it was going to be actively opposed. Any frozen economic assets of Russian oligarchs could be immediately sequestrated, and it could be pointed out what the tax-equivalent of such a move could be. Is any of this likely to happen and I am forced to say it is unlikely – but, if it does, you can brag to your friends that you read it here first.

Yesterday and somewhat unusually I overslept a little and got up at 5.30 with the carers having been rescheduled to start at 7.15 rather than (my preferred time of ) 8.00pm.Instead of two carers plus a shadow, we ended up with one carer and a shadow But there was quite a lot of explaining that needed to be done. Our domestic help has switched her day from a Friday to a Wednesday which actually I always prefer. Our domestic help radically remade my camp bed which was just as well as I had to get up remake it all in the middle of the night when my blankets had either slid off and everything had got rolled into a bundle. The morning post brought some much-needed prescriptions for Meg and I will explore later if I need to renew any of my own. Later in the day, a parcel arrived which was an oil-filled radiator which I had ordered and which I was expecting. Some days ago one of the carers who is exceptionally healthy conscious was worried that I was letting the house get too cold in the desire to save on heating costs – several of her clients and her own grandfather were experiencing the same dilemma. She had purchased on oil-filled radiator for herself and her grandfather and had been very impressed by it – moreover, the firm Screwfix were having a special offer on them. They are about 75% of the cost of running a fan heater and probably even less as they retail the heat and carry on releasing it even when they are switched off. There are a number of specific advantages as well particularly in larger rooms so although Meg was being kept warm with plenty of warm clothes and a blanket around her, I did not want her to be disadvantaged by my eagerness to save on heating costs. Well, the unit arrived and my domestic help and I quickly fitted on its portable feet and gave it a good test. The model I have bought has three heats of 1.0, 1,5 and 2.5kw and I tried it out on the middle power heat and the middle thermostat setting. I experienced the reverse of buyer’s remorse which I suppose is buyer’s delight because the unit far exceeded my expectations, was relatively quick to heat up and is of excellent deign with eleven fins to help to heat the room rapidly. So I have this installed in our Music Lounge where it will remain as a permanent fixture without being at all obtrusive.

Meg and I treated ourselves to a production of ‘La Boheme’ this afternoon. The male singers I did knot know but were excellent with Mirella Freni playing Mimi. As the set design was by Zeffirelli and the conductor was Herbert von Karajan, the production was of an excellent quality and it helped to make a very enjoyable afternoon to lift the gloom of the international news.

Yesterday, we awoke to a temperature which was still in negative territory of -1° but with the prospect, after a cloudy start, of some clearer skies later in the day and temperatures that may well arise. I think the whole of the country is anticipating what is meant to happen in a day or so when the temperature is scheduled to rise to as much as 12° but this may well be a one day wonder and presages the start of some wet and windy weather when a low moving in from the Atlantic edges up to a ‘blocking high’ which is sitting over eastern England and Northern Europe at the moment. Many eyes are focused on Europe in the next few days ahead as European society is having to cope with some profound changes in the political landscape. European political leaders are facing the fact that defence spending needs to rise quite dramatically to cope with the threat from Russia who, with the tacit assistance of President Trump, may well get away with the seizure of some 20% of the Ukraine. In geopolitical terms, since the fall of the Berlin wall on 9th November 1989 then the regimes of the countries of Western Europe have allowed the proportion of their GNP to drift downwards as they have faced the pressures of an ageing population with more monies needing to be spent on their healthcare. Advanced economies used to spend more than 3% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on military goals, up until 1991. This number was lowered to as much as 1.6% of GDP by 2015. Only after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, did the defence spending in Europe begin to rise, albeit not sharply on a general level. By 2019, Europe still was not investing a nominal 2% of GDP, which is mandatory under NATO rules. But we are now in a situation where the approximately 2.0-2.5 proportion of GNP needs to rise by anything from a quarter to a half and where is the money to come from? The UK is now alone in facing up to these dilemmas, but the stark choices boiled down to some, or some combination, of the following. The most painful is to cut our spending on the welfare services in order to increase defence expenditures whilst another alternative is to raise taxation. There are some who argue that taxation of all kinds is at an almost record high and raising taxes and cutting living standards is a quick path to electoral oblivion. A third alternative is to borrow the money if you can find any investors in the wider world willing to lend it to us and which will have to be ultimately repaid, adding in the meantime to servicing costs to pay the interest on the monies borrowed. It is no wonder that the finance chiefs of European societies may well be having some sleepless nights as they wonder where the money for increased defence is to come from and how this need for extra money is to be sold to their respective electorates. Keir Starmer is both urging his European colleagues to spend more money on defence whilst also trying to persuade the Americans that they continue to provide a backdrop of support for a post Ukraine conflict world. As I am writing this blog, the ‘Today’ programme is discussing these very dilemmas, and I suspect that it is going to dominate our political agenda for the months ahead. The figure that is being bandied about is that some £9 billion of cuts needs to be undertaken which is the entire budget of our DEFRA ministry and cuts of some £17 billion are even being talked about. This cutting agenda falls into the lap of a Labour government and whether or not they will be supported by the right-wing parties (Conservatives, Reform) is an interesting question. The Conservatives look on current trends, as though they may be eclipsed on the right by the Reform (ex UKIP) party and the next local elections at the start of April will be the very first occasion when we can see whether these opinion poll forecasts are turned into actual votes on the ground.

Although we knew the outside temperature was on the cold side, the skies cleared somewhat, and so Meg and I set forth just at 10.00am to walk down the hill for the first time for a week and we first called in at Waitrose to collect our newspaper. In the store where we are so well known, the staff greeted Meg warmly although she was only half awake and one of the wonderfully friendly partners pressed a bunch of a dozen red roses into our hands (left over from Valentine’s day, no doubt) and then we made onwards to Wetherspoons where we had our by now traditional freshly prepared egg and bacon breakfast crumpet with a perpetual cup of drinking chocolate for £2.77. We met up with our two friends and I shared them my tales of woe concerning lost iPhones and delayed direct debits before we had to leave quite early to make sure we were home by 11.30. Fortunately, whatever wind there was blew from behind us on the way home so did not distress us, Meg’s normal sit of two hours on a Tuesday had been retimed but we told the agency to forget about the first hour (as we would be out) and to have the young carer, who we know and like very much, to just sit for the second hour. Then between us, we hatched up a plot which will play out as follows. Having prepared the roses and divided the roses into two bunches of six, I gave one of them to the young female carer and told her to tell her long term boyfriend (who is also one of Meg’s carers and coincidentally calling round tomorrow) to say that she had received the roses from a secret admirer and they had been left on her car windscreen. Then tomorrow, I am going to casually ask if either of them had received any Valentine’s gifts last Friday and then the young female carer and I are going to keep a straight face whilst I ask my questions in all innocence and then observe the reactions. I did enjoin upon the young female carer to ‘fess up’ if there was the slightest indication that the boyfriend was becoming jealous or upset in these little transactions, but we will not have long to wait to see how it all plays out. Just before a lunch I had made a Mike style risotto (made with half a pack of mackerel), the firm appointed by the house insurance to oversee and commission the redecoration work after the leak we had about a month ago piad us a visit. The firm itself is a family firm and the absolute model of professionalism, exuding a lot of confidence about how they are to engage in their stage of the process but one feature that I really liked to see was a sheet containing the colour photographs and contact details of each member of the firm with whom one might need to interact. What a brilliantly simple idea (the policy of the founder of the firm) and one that bodes well. In the fullness of time, I will have to pay a fairly hefty excess but that from point of time onwards, the all the repair and redecoration costs will be borne by the insurance company.

Last night, after Meg was safely put to bed, I was engaged in some tidying up and realised that my phone was not where it should be. Then followed one of the worst 20 minutes I should ever experience as my iPhone seemed to be irrevocably lost. Normally, when it is temporarily misplaced, I do not really panic but have a really ancient Nokia phone with oodles of credit on it which does not expire on the deal I have with Tesco PAYG mobile and so all I have to do is to phone my iPhone to locate it. But last night, try as I might I phoned and phoned and could not hear my iPhone anywhere. I knew I had it earlier in the day to phone my University of Birmingham friend and eventually located it to my evident relief but why had it not rung when I accessed it from my Nokia? The new iPhone16 has several unmarked buttons on it (three on one side and two on the other) and one of these at the top on the right left side is a ‘silent’ mode button which must have been inadvertently pushed when I was putting it in its case. I consulted the web for a diagram of the buttons whose function I had forgotten and Apple very (unhelpfully) explained that it had relocated the silent mode button to a place where you want to use it frequently. This may well be true when entering a meeting or some other public meeting place but if you put your phone down somewhere it can make it hard to find. As I could not get it to respond, my worst fears was that one of the carers had mistaken it for their own phone and taken it inadvertently out of the house because they each have a smartphone (which they themselves sometimes lose when they put it down inside the house) and sometimes an extra work phone as well. In fact, one of the young Asian carers had a similar experience when he had placed his phone on one of the curved arms to a leather armchair and it has slid down and out of sight. So now I know, I am going to be extra careful about this and the left hand button in particular. I had been up in the middle of the night as I had a little bout of indigestion and had taken some special indigestion relief and thought I would wait 15 minutes for it to settle and for the electric blanket to heat up before I returned back to my campbed besides Meg’s. I switched on the TV which was tuned to the BBC news channel and was in the middle of a Business report, focusing as it happened on the Spanish economy. What instantly took my attention was the opening shot of Segovia which is a little Spanish town to the north of Madrid made famous by the most magnificent three tier stone aqueduct, built by the Romans and still in use today. When I visited it with Meg and later with a colleague who had come out from England to try to organise a joint MSc degree, traffic still circulated round and under the bridge, but I think it has now been isolated from the traffic so as not to sustain damage from vehicle emissions. What is remarkable about the structure is that it is a prime example of magnificent Roman architectures built without cement and in such a way that the stones naturally abut with and cradle each other. But the wider news report was how well the Spanish economy was doing with a growth rate of 3% which was much superior to the German and the French (and obviously the UK) economy and all of this whilst a Socialist government is in power as well. I may tune into the BBC News Channel later on in the day to try to get the full report of which I only saw a half.

There are several newsworthy news items yesterday morning. Keir Starmer is off to an emergency meeting of Europeans in Paris to work out a response to the Putin-Trump attempt to carve up the future of the Ukraine without the Ukrainians (or even the Europeans) actually being allowed to attend the meeting. This seems so extraordinary and it may be that Trump will relent but I suspect his dislike for Europeans is so intense that Europe will continue to be excluded. Keir Starmer is actually seizing the initiative to some extent by saying that he is ‘ready and willing’ that British troops, even though they could be put in harm’s way, should form part of a buffer force between the Russians and the Ukrainians once a peace agreement of some sort is agreed. Germany, which is to have elections shortly, and France are in some disarray politically so Starmer could step in to the breach to provide some European military leadership which is an interesting concept in its own right.

Yesterday morning, I had to make a judgement call whether the conditions were such that I could Meg a push down the hill. In the event, I was guided by my iPhone weather app which said the temperature because of the wind chill factor would feel like -3° so I thought we should both stay at home, particularly as I had some phone calls to make. One massive irritation with which I have to deal was an uncollected direct debit as my contribution to Meg’s care which Worcestershire County Council failed, for diverse reasons, to collect last August and trying to do so now. One way or another this will have to be paid but it is a molestation I could well do without. Our chiropodist called around in the late morning performing services beyond the call of duty (such as a manicure of Meg’s hands) for which I was very grateful. She also let me have some of her special ointment for my hands (my fingers being full of cracks from the cold weather) which again was highly appreciated. In the afternoon, after a delayed lunch, Meg and I viewed a programme on the BBC iPlayer on Elizabeth I which was first broadcast the evening before and which I have saved for an occasion such as the afternoon when Meg and I have time to enjoy it.