Thursday is the day when I do my shopping and I think this week is going to be a fairly ‘light’ week as I do not seem to have consumed that much. I do make sure that I have a fair quantity of fruit and I would always buy some bananas (good for their potassium level), some of those flat peaches which are so easy to de-stone because you can cut them around and then separate the peaches into two halves with a twisting motion and some big ripe plums. As I go through my morning routines, I keep getting filled with relief that the three massive technological problems I had yesterday (lack of internet access to my bank account, the landline number having to be replaced and sound restored to the car’s SatNav) were all actually resolved in the day instead of grinding on and on. But, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet: ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions’ which is an experience well known to all of us when problems seem to appear together in clumps. This week is turning out to be quite a busy one filled with quite a lot of what one might call ‘routine’ medical appointments and I expect our chiropodist later on today, postponed from last Monday. However, the appointment did not take place due to a misunderstanding but is scheduled for later on today. I just thought that my tech problems had done away but one has returned to plague me. Despite being told that a direct debit charge for the cancellation of a contract with BT should not have been charged and should not have been collected, nonetheless the money has left bank account., When I tried to phone up EE to complain their customer support line is ‘unavailable’ and I was told to try again later. I am tempted to believe that companies like this are very efficient in collecting money but less so when it comes to providing a service so this might take some days and hassle to resolve.
Sky News is reporting the latest revelation in the Donald Trump/Epstein story. Donald Trump was told in May that his name appears multiple times in justice department files related to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein according to the Wall Street Journal. The American president has come under fire for not releasing the documents – breaking a campaign promise – with some questioning his ties to Epstein. Now the newspaper reports Mr Trump is aware his name is included in the files, along with many other high-profile figures. Being mentioned in the records is not a sign of wrongdoing, and Mr Trump has not been accused of anything. The White House initially described the report as ‘fake news’, but Reuters news agency said an official told them the administration is not denying Mr Trump’s name is there. This story will run and run if only because in his election campaign, Trump insisted that these files showed up prominent Democrats in an exceptionally bad light but it look as though the truth is that this itself was wishful thinking and was the ultimate in ‘fake news’ Having been repeatedly promised full disclosure. the MAGA (‘Make America Great Again’) movement is deeply suspicious about non-disclosure and seems to be deeply split on the issue.
Sky News is also reporting on a big domestic issue is confronting our politicians to which there is no immediate answer- welfare versus warfare. For decades, it is a question to which successive prime ministers have responded with one answer. After the end of the Cold War, leaders across the West banked the so-called ‘peace dividend’ that came with the end of this conflict between Washington and Moscow. Instead of funding their armies, they invested in the welfare state and public services instead. But now the tussle over this question is something that the current prime minister is grappling with, and it is shaping up to be one of the biggest challenges for Sir Keir Starmer since he got the job last year. As Clement Attlee became the Labour prime minister credited with creating the welfare state after the end of the Second World War, so it now falls on the shoulders of the current Labour leader to create the warfare state as Europe rearms. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall our domestic needs have arisen, not least because some parts of the population are still bearing the after effects of COVID and the period of austerity immediately after it. The great moral and political dilemma is whether those who are sick or disabled should bear the brunt of the costs of increasing our national expenditure on defence?