The not desperately cold weather is continuing this morning and when I awoke I noticed on the horizon clear skies so a reasonably clear and sunny day is in prospect. I mentioned to my next-door neighbour when I saw him yesterday that I wanted just one reasonably fine day so I can give my lawns a final cut so that I could ‘winterise’ the mower by removing the last of the oil and the petrol. My neighbour informed me tat he had just acquired a new gardener and he was in the same boat as myself so it looks as though we will both be seizing the opportunity presented by a reasonably sunny day today (with a temperature rising to 6°).The evening before I had not gone to bed until 1.00am in the morning because as I was in bed, I suddenly became gripped by a whistleblower drama based on true events in the run up to the Iraq war. A GCHQ employee discovered that the UK authorities were conniving with the Americans to illegally spy on UN delegates in order to secure a resolution that would give legal cover to an invasion of Iraq. The GCQC employee was appalled that the UK was rushing headlong into an evidently illegal war and when the leaked memo was traced to het she was arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The young employee, Katherine Gunn, was soon to discover how the whole weight of the British security state was to descend upon her – even talking to a lawyer (in this case from the organisation ‘Liberty’) would be deemed a further breach of the Official Secrets Act making her liable to an even longer term of imprisonment. Hr only slender line of defence was to ague that a defence to breaking the Official Secrets Act would be the saving life and in the case of the Iraq war, thousands of lives. Her lawyers discovered that at the time of the offence, the view of the Attorney General was that the war was illegal but they were subsequently ‘bounced’ by the Americans and the UK authorities to change their view three days before the invasion. Now we come to the trial itself where the government would be forced to reveal that the official view at the time of the offence that the war was illegal and this would evidently be massively embarrassing to the Blair government, laying it open to the charge of war crimes. So the prosecution decided to withdraw the prosecution citing only that ‘the prosecution had no reasonable chance of success’ and so the employee, Katherine Gun was released although she had had charges hanging over her for a year. Incidentally, the non-discovery of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq at the conclusion of the war effectively blew the cover of the British and American government. This was all such gripping stuff that it kept me awake until nearly 1.00am but it was a fascinating watch. I also learnt that the Official Secrets Act had been amended after a similar case where a civil servant, Clive Ponting, leaked details of the illegal action taken against the Belgrano in the Falklands way when the Belgrano was sailing away from the Falkland islands but was sunk by the British with a loss of 323 lives. The amendment was in effect that even when the state had been evidently lying, this could no longer be used as a defence if charged under the ‘Official Secrets Act’ and this was something I did not know. Even now, I do not think that the bitterness shown towards Tony Blair not only in this country but across the whole of the Middle East is fully appreciated as it is evident ta the whole of the Iraq war was based upon a lie and only done to ingratiate ourselves with the ‘neo-con’ American regime at the time.
My son made a visit to me just at about breakfast time after his early morning swim and he was telling me about his visit to see his mother-in-law where he and his wife had managed to get some domestic issues, principally concerned with housing issues, sorted out in their visit. This was good news because there are occasions when my son and his wife are trying to sort issues at a distance so it was in everyone’s interest to get some of these issues resolved. After he had left, my Droitwich friend called around and I made her some breakfast (a sort of thrown together Spanish omelette) whilst she made calls on her laptop. Then we went down the hill and paid a visit to my Irish friend who was able to give us some of her help and advice. Then I watched a bit of news on the TV before it was time for me to go down and do my Pilates class where a jolly time was had by all. One of my class members is in the throes of moving house to live nearer to her daughter but she has lived in her present house for some 38 years so I think she has got quite a lot of throwing away to do. I think she is up to four skips at the moment but there are probably more to follow before they move in January. After Pilates I came home and had some food which my friend had left for me and then prepared myself for the one outside job I hdd scheduled in my mind for the afternoon. This was to be the final cut of the back lawn but as this was going to be the very last cut of the season, I knew that I had prepare the mower for winter. This involves tipping the mower well over onto one of his sides to drain off that season’s oil (into one of those foil containers that pies and quiches often come in) to be transferred to a jam-jar. Then the mower had to be tipped on the other side to drain off the petrol but as there was only about ½ pint of this, I just threw it away. Now the mower has been put to bed I just hope and pray that it will start off unproblematically in late March next year. I finished at about 4.15 and the light had not faded so much that I couldn’t see what I was doing but by 4.30 it was pitch black so I just squeezed the job in within the hours of daylight that remain to us these days. When I got back in, I rewarded myself with a hot chocolate drink and a swift telephone call to my Droitwich friend to see what kind of a day she had had and we made some arrangements for a couple of days ahead.