The evening before yesterday, I was treated to a planned visit by some of the young people who used to care for Meg. They were three in number, two who knew Meg plus a resident boyfriend, and the principal thing we wanted to discuss was the arrangements for  Christmas party I was going to throw for them – just as we did last year. They are all delightful young people and it was a joy to see them again and, of course, to party with them. The most important thing to determine was the date and we decided to bring this forward a day to Sunday, 7th December as this would fit with their shift and duty patterns so much the better. We discussed the kind of food and drink I should supply which is much of what we did last year but the young people said they would bring along some bits and pieces of party food themselves and help me put things out. We have decided that the actual party food should be laid out as a buffet in our dining room and there people can sit around the table and chatter whilst they eat which will be easier and less messy than balancing things on a plate on your knee. The young people were full of the comings and goings of staff in the care agency – as might be expected, there is quite a lot of comings and goings with some people leaving, coming back and then leaving again in the agency. I am going to leave all of the invitations to the young male Asian carer who has got most of the contacts available to him via social media and Facebook pages but also access to the agency’s contact list as he himself is a ‘Team leader’ and is often responsible now, as he has been in the past year, for organising some rotas and plugging short term gaps. They all had very happy memories of Meg including some of the witty things she had said, even last year at this time when they were busy refilling her glass with Prosecco. As the young people were driving, I offered them all some soft drinks but also I made some onion bhajis for them. I had bought a packet of the mixture to make 8 altogether and this was a little messy although they turned out all right I had to fry off a couple of onions and then add the powder and some water before forming them into balls. These then had to be fried in hot fat for a couple of minutes and then finished off in the oven for about 15 minutes. I had actually just finished cooking when the young people arrived so the timings could not have been better. I was delighted to learn that the young female carer who was particularly fond of Meg (and it was a mutual feeling) had secured a place on a nursing degree at the University of Worcester which is probably our nearest university and as this was her first choice I was delighted for her. This was the young carer to whom I gave a cross that Meg had worn constantly around her neck and who had burst into tears (by all accounts) when she received Meg’s piece of jewellery on the occasion of her 18th birthday. Just before the carers arrived, my Droitwich friend had arrived unexpectedly at my house as she had locked herself out of her own house grabbing the wrong set of keys in a hurry to pick up he boys from the nearby public school. But she knew that they had some keys so it was just a case of coinciding with them when they were ready to leave. I anticipate that we will be spending some together over the weekend cooking some steak together (unless further mishaps intervene) as the boys will be with their father and, of course, it goes without saying that I love to have company over the weekend. It looks as though Sunday might be a final burst of quite good and even sunny weather so we are going to grab the opportunity of a walk in the park whilst we have the fortune of a fine day.

In the morning after a fairly leisurely start to the day, I walked down into town a little later than usual but was relieved to obtain the very last copy of ‘The Times’ as I sat down and availed myself of the free cup of coffee available to cardholders. As I flicked through the pages of the newspaper, the principal headline screamed at me that the hospitality industry was going to be hit by an unprecedented tax rise from the spring onwards. This was due to the fact that the business rates payable were calculated on very out-of-date valuations and the average high street property was worth much more than formerly. Also, the whole industry was benefitting from a 40% discount on business rates following the pandemic and this was due to end next April. In other words the hospitality industry had been the recipient of a double handout in the form of a less than up-to-date valuation coupled with a 40% discount but methinks many of those affected would probably complain about the rise in claims made upon Universal Credit and the increase in the welfare budget. When this is thought about, there is a massive hypocrisy and double standard in all of this where some state subsidies and handouts are seen as ‘justified’ (if they go to businesses) but not if they go to welfare recipients many of whom are suffering from disabilities either mental or physical.  As I was walking back up the hill this morning, I started wondering about the average wage both wen I started work in 1962 and today. So I looked up the figures and was frankly astonished – the average full time earnings in 1962 was £754 pa  (£14.50 per week) whereas today, in 2025 it is £36,000 (£692 per week). My first weekly wage was £3 17s. 6d a week (£3.87) which was less than 30% of the then average wage so this was low – even when I started washing dishes in one of the 4 star hotels in Harrogate I was paid 2s 6d (12.5p) an hour which meant that if I worked a 40 hour week in the vacations at Christmas or during the summer vacations, I could earn £5.00 a week.

The evening before yesterday, I made the journey out to my friend’s house in Droitwich where we were going to cook together. The traffic around Droitwich was a nightmare and it took me ages even to leave my own drive and immediately surrounding streets but I managed to arrive at my friend’s house without mishap. As I was evidently driving there and back, I took with a bottle containing some dregs of red wine (approximately half a glass) and took with me some tonic water. I was amazed what a pleasant drink this made and it lasted me the whole of the evening giving me as much pleasure as a full bodied red wine might have done so this is a good tip for the future. My Droitwich friend started to prepare a fish curry and I helped with the preparations. for this – she used a tin of South African pilchards but I think I will substitute a tin of mackerel which is more readily available. A my friend is such a good cook and has a huge range of spices, this was evidently delicious but I have subsequently consulted a YouTube video which takes you through everything stage by stage, So we had a delicious meal and afterwards my friend showed me her Christmas decorations that she had been putting up with the assistance of her sons. Then she gave me a tour of the rest of the house into which she had only moved late last February and is subsequently remodelling bit by bit to sit her tastes and life style. Although my friend knew the features of my house (because I had given her a guided tour in the past) we had never had the opportunity before to visit hers which had been architect designed and then extended so it was quite extensive.To finish of this domestic evening, I had taken along my aged iPad and on this I showed her again the various series of photos which more or less followed Meg throughout her life. My friend had seen these some some six months ago but I managed to explain to her what each of the groups of friends were in the photos. Then I showed her my pottery-and-chairs website that I have constructed in the past. Some 2-3 years ago, Meg and I decided to move into the lounge vacated by my son and daughter-in-law, the large room was completely devoid of furniture apart from one or two bookcases that had been left behind.  So we started to slowly populate the room with some good pieces of furniture, starting off with a ‘captain’s chair’ which I acquired either through eBay auctions or from our local Age Concern shop which stocked second hand furniture. As I acquired each piece, I restored it to a nearly pristine condition with a range of specialist oils and then photographed each piece and wrote a paragraph for the website indicated where it was purchased, what I knew of its provenance and its value. The room is now officially ‘full’ and my furniture buying spree has come to a halt, because I literally do not need any more, When I showed my friend the website, I reminded myself that I had spent a total of £425 on some 14 pieces altogether. With a combination of either good luck or a skill at spotting a bargain, I have now acquired some furniture at a fraction of its real value (according to the web) and have generally bought some stuff for about £30 a piece or so which is actually worth about ten times what I paid for it. This did give me a certain amount of pleasure during the buying and restoration process and it certainly helped to make Meg’s  last few months a happy and pleasurable one, particularly when I sought her advice as to what to buy and so to some extent we were making joint decisions together whilst she was capable. Looking back on it now, I would do the same thing all over again as well.

In the morning, everything seemed a bit delayed  I got up rather late (for me) at 8.00am having woken up early and then promptly turned off the alarm and went back to sleep again. Eventually,I got myself up and breakfasted and then  went on a trip along the Bromsgrove High Street. I had the most run of good luck by escaping a parking fine within seconds. Normally, I am assiduous in getting a ticket from the machine as soon as the car has been parked  but I decided to sneak into Waitrose to get my daily newspaper. There was only one manned till in operation and I was stuck behind a women who had done a big shop up and who then couldn’t get her phone to work in such  way  that she could pay for it. So I dived out of that queue and paid for my newspaper with my usual voucher but when I got out into the car park the attendant was hovering over my car.  I explained that I was on my way to get a ticket but I don’t think I was believed because the attendant told me that I has just come from the direction of the ticket machine next to the store. I explained that I only used cash in the ticket machines and to use the one at the far end of the car park even though I had a newspaper tucked under my arm and had evidently been into the store. He gave me the benefit of his (considerable) doubt and I ran to the machine, got my ticket and waved it in front of him and, one way or another,  managed to make myself legal to his satisfaction. Then I progressed down to my bank which is one of the few remaining on the High street and presented my newly delivered bank card to the in-store ATM which promptly refused to recognise it. By good fortune, I managed to commander an assistant with whom I had had a banking review about a month before hand and explained my dilemma. She took me into her office where the new card was read by her machine (reading the chip) but she thought that the ATM had failed to function because it was reading the magnetic strip. So she ordered me a new card and I went back to the in-store ATM whereupon my old card failed to work (but the new one now did)  So I ended up with the two available in-store assistants trying to work out how and why their technology was working or failing to work but at the end of the day I now have some living money out of the ATM and a card that works.

The temperature this morning seemed pretty mild so it appears that we are in for a spell of fair weather as the month runs out. Not surprisingly, the Budget delivered on Wednesday is continuing to occupy a lot of attention. One particular feature of it was to limit the amount of benefit that employees (and their employers) could gain from a salary sacrifice scheme. I have not heard an analysis of this by the various pundits but my own searching on the web has conformed my view that it is sort of middle class scam to avoid tax. Without going into the figures too deeply, the holders of a private pension can ask that some of their salary be paid into their pension pot. This reduces their liability for tax and National Insurance on their remaining income so that an employee with a salary of about £40k who sacrificed £5k would end up paying £200 a year less tax and their employer about £345 less. So the Budget was attempting to address this particular arrangement which meant a loss of income to the Exchequer. About 30% of private pension schemes utilised this facility and I suspect that it was even more beneficial to higher rate taxpayers as well- obviously no such scheme was offered to those employees, generally lower paid, who were part of a public pension scheme. The budget is being attacked for breaking the manifesto pledge that income tax would not be raised but as rates of tax have remained the same but allowances have been cut resulting in a higher tax bill then it becomes a question of semantics whether the Labour manifesto pledge has been broken or not.

Some terrible news has emerged from Hong Kong overnight. Fire broke out in a high rise building and quickly spread to adjacent buildings. The use of bamboo rather than steel as a scaffolding material contributed to the severity of the disaster. At least 70 people have been killed in a major fire engulfing public housing apartments in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district – and more than 250 are still not accounted for. Officials on Thursday morning said the fire was under control in four out of seven affected buildings, and they hoped to quell the remaining blazes by the evening. As the fires subside, questions are now mounting as to how the blaze initially started, and who should be held accountable. By way of comparison, the death toll at the Grenfell tower block in London resulted in 72 deaths and it seems likely that the ultimate death toll in Hong Kong may exceed this. Incidentally, the Grenfell fire was more than eight years ago and the issues arising from it are not fully resolved. I suspect that there is a considerable volume of remediation work yet to be undertaken. Approximately half of the required work has been completed and Of the 5,176 buildings identified with unsafe cladding, 2,482 (48%) have started or completed remediation works, of which 1,754 (34%) have completed remediation works. This includes remediation progress on high rise (18m+) and mid-rise (11-18m) buildings in height.

The day unfolded in quite an interesting direction. By doing my shopping on Wednesday afternoons, this releases Thursday mornings for me to do other things. I was a little tired throughout the day because I had some acid reflux in the middle of the night (my own fault, as I had eaten some biscuits and cheese in the late evening) so was up for a bit whilst it settled and then had a strange dream where I was wondering around a strange castle after a party with ‘artistic’ folks that went until dawn and then I couldn’t find my way out (and thought I had lost my wallet as well) It was one of those dreams where you are glad to wake up and discover that you are not lost after all.  I did my customary Tai Chi and afterwards had a coffee and toasted teacake with my good friend, the one-time banker from Stoke. There are about three men in the class and the other 10-12 are ladies who, quite naturally, commune with each other after our class. Then I came home to carry on conversations with our domestic help who had made it her cleaning day today. My Droitwich friend texted me and we were wondering who was going to visit who in the late afternoon/early evening. I was going to wait until my son could assist me in getting all of the Christmas decorations down from the loft as this is often a two-handed job but he is going on holiday next week so I thought I had better put some preparations in hand now. So I utilised our long aluminium step ladders to get everything needed out of the left. Over the years, we have learned to always have the Christmas things together in their own pile and near to the loft aperture but I managed fairly easily to get all of the stuff out where it is gracing our upstairs landing but I will not attempt to start the decorations for a day or so yet when I will have people to help me. I received a text from two of Meg’s erstwhile carers, plus a boyfriend, who are calling to call round to see me tomorrow evening and we can start to make some active preparations for the party that we anticipate holding in about ten days time on Monday, December 8th. We intend to make it an all afternoon and evening affair to fit in with shift patterns and I have high hopes that it will be as successful as last year’s Christmas party  (and, evidently Meg’s last social event, as we knew that it would be) It does seem rather strange to be making preparations for Christmas when it is not yet quite December and the first Christmas without Meg is bound to be tinged with a certain amount of sadness. Last night, as I was going through some old texts, I rediscovered a website that I had put together just after Meg had died with two links in it, one being the eulogy I gave at her funeral service but the other being a whole series of photographs which more or less covered the whole of Meg’s life from the age of about 4 until just before she died. The last photograph was poignant in the extreme and showed Meg sitting alone on a park bench wrapped in her very warm goose-down coat which she wore almost constantly in the cold weather.

As I awoke yesterday morning, it seemed pretty cold in my bedroom and I was to discover that the outside temperature was -3° but anticipated to rise to 8° later on in the day, so we evidently starting off the day with some very clear skies. The budget is due to be delivered at 12.30 today but all kinds of pre-announcements have taken place so that we are aware already of various ‘goodies’ on the budget such as increases to the minimum wage and to the full state pension. It used to be the case that the whole budget was shrouded in the most complete secrecy until the moment of delivery, no doubt so that speculators could not make a fortune on the stock market but the norms seem to have changed in today’s conditions. One is aware of a certain degree of ‘softening up’ of the electorate as pre-announcements are made of typically the good news, no doubt to try to set a climate of opinion before the budget news is delivered later on. This budget has been much anticipated and mulled over for weeks beforehand but the only certainty is that Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, will have to somehow plug a gap of some £20bn-£30bn in the nation’s finances. Almost certainly, we shall have a freeze on the allowances against tax which means that all kinds of individuals, including many pensioners, will be dragged into paying tax, or even higher rates of tax, for the first time. Sky News has a ‘Money’ section on its website which encourages individuals to contribute their own ideas as to what should go into the budget.  I was rather taken by these thoughts from one individual which ran as follows: ‘1p per litre on fuel, 1p on income tax wholly for the NHS, 5% tax on betting winnings over £500, tax on company directors who do not reward employees, and 1p on every drink at major coffee houses. This would raise huge amounts and be largely invisible to consumers. Give me a job.’ Everybody has their own particular grouse about the budget but we do have probably the most complex tax system in the world. The UK tax code is generally cited as the world’s longest, estimated to be over 21,000 pages and containing more than 10 million words.  The size of the ‘book’ is a common measure of the UK’s tax system’s complexity, though the exact page count can vary depending on what is included: Total Handbooks: The combined ‘Yellow and Orange Tax Handbooks’, which are comprehensive reference tools used by tax professionals, can run to over 21,000 pages in multiple volumes. Substantive Legislation: A 2012 report by the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) estimated that the actual, unduplicated, substantive and administrative law was closer to 6,102 pages at that time, as the handbooks also include non-statutory materials, repealed legislation, and duplicated content. Comparison: To put the length in perspective, the 10 million words in the tax code are approximately:12 times the length of the Complete Works of Shakespeare or 9 times the length of all the Harry Potter books combined. The length has increased significantly over the years, trebling in size since 1997, leading to calls for simplification from various tax bodies and professionals. 

After I had breakfasted, my son and daughter-in-law called around and we had a long chat about family, friends, relationships and how we were filling our respective lives. This year, my son and daughter-in-law are spending Christmas with me together on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and we have spent some time planning out what our Christmas meals are going to be as we are all planning to eat the things that we really do like, rather than just relying upon the traditional Christmas fare. Given my family had called around, this meant that I decided to forego my usual visit to the Methodist centre and I settled down with a good supply of elevenses, prepared to watch the fairly momentous Budget speech from the very start. The commentators were saying that the Chancellor needed to satisfy four sets of ‘audiences’ simultaneously – firstly, her own Labour Party backbenchers, then the wider electorate, then the business community and finally the stock market and bond traders. So this was going to be a very tricky balancing act and one at which Liz Truss spectacularly failed as she was relying upon the ‘kindness of strangers’ to provide the funds for otherwise unfunded tax cuts and the stock market promptly bombed. Although the political commentators do not agree as such, I think that Rachel Reeves did a pretty good job. The Labour backbenchers were reasonably satisfied particularly as no manifesto pledges were overtly broken and the cap on Child benefit beyond the first two had been removed. The business community issued a few grumbles about the cost of paying for additions to the National Minimum wage but this was only to be expected, particularly as the business community cannot have high expectations of a Labour chancellor. Perhaps most surprising was the reaction of the Stock market which may even have risen a little. The markets seemed happy that Reeves was building up some ‘financial headroom’ for the years ahead which certainly aids sentiment within the city.  As for the wider public, then some £28bn has been extracted from then, largely under the guise of stealth taxes, by not uprating allowances to be set against tax or in other words, the ultimate stealth tax. It will be interesting to gauge the reaction of, for example the ‘Question Time ‘ audience when it takes to the air on Thursday evening. There was an astonishing twist to the whole of the budget when the OBR made public the budget essentials a couple of hours before the presentation to the House of Commons in what was undoubtedly an error. Rachel Reeves was both furious and a trifle unlucky because as some of the figures behind the tax rises had already been released by the OBR then the opportunity for a political spin on issues was reduced. The main impact of the tax rises will slowly accumulate over the next few years as income tax allowances are frozen for the next few years and there is quite a lot of speculation this evening whether Rachel Reeves has done sufficient to save her political skin or whether she, and Starmer, might be ditched by an unhappy Labour Party in the next few months. But Reeves deserves some credit for keeping both the Labour Party and the stock market happy at the same time.

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.

So, yesterday, the start of the week saw an initial temperature of 2° which should rise to 7° later in the day. This is only to be welcomed after the cold blast of arctic air that we experienced last week. I always feel that if you have some bad weather in December, though, it is more bearable as Christmas is in sight and we are now in the last week of November.  In the forthcoming week, I have nothing that stands out on my planning board where I detail appointments for the forthcoming month but I know that I need to pay a visit to a hardware type store where I can replace a shower head that fell to pieces in my hands the other day. I am still waiting for something like a fine day when I can do the last cut of our back lawn and hen ‘winterise’ our trusty mower. Shortly, we will have the much anticipated budget thrust upon us and it will be interesting to see how much pain is inflicted upon us and which shoulders are called upon to bear the burden. Of course, we may see ‘efficiency savings’ as well as tax increases but how much actual waste in state expenditures can be discerned is the subject of much political debate, Despite the political fanfare, Reform’s Doge unit – styled after Elon Musk’s US ‘department of government efficiency’ – never arrived in Lancashire. To date, Doge has reportedly visited just three Reform councils – Kent, Worcestershire and West Northamptonshire – and has failed to scrutinise any internal finances at any council because of legal barriers. An analysis by The Observer of financial documents from the 12 local authorities now run by Reform reveals the scale of the challenge faced by the unit, with a budget shortfall of £300m across the councils in 2026-27. Most Reform-run councils have already indicated they will need to raise council taxes, as well as implement significant cuts to balance budgets next year. Reform-run Worcestershire council is now seeking residents’ views on council tax rises next year of up to 10%. Sources from other councils told The Observer that they expected Reform would have to take similar measures around the country. Last Wednesday, Zia Yusuf was replaced as head of the Doge unit by Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader. Tice has described Doge as a ‘philosophy’ of saving money. Critics, however, say it is ‘fantasy politics. It has all unravelled – they haven’t identified any waste. Reform’s promised Doge has not materialised’ said Daniel Lister, leader of the opposition and Conservative group at West Northamptonshire council. ‘For all the spin during the election, the reality is that Reform has no new ideas, no new ways of saving money and no understanding of how to run a council.’ On the subject of the forthcoming budget, there is speculation or perhaps even a deliberate Treasury leak that pensioners may receive a higher than expected settlement starting from April next year. If this is true, I find it surprising but slightly strange politics unless it can be seen as a ‘sweetener’ to offset other policies such as the end of the triple lock system.

I had no real commitments on today so after some tidying up, I walked into town to pick sup some supplies and my newspaper from Waitrose. On my way out, I bumped into my neighbour who I was particularly pleased to see as we have not coincided for a week or so now and I know that he is gradually recuperating after knee replacement surgery. For good measure, his wife is due to have a hip replaced perhaps next week so my neighbours appear to have been in the wars a little as well. Then I put together some bits and pieces from the fridge to make a sort of stir-fry which was potato free (as I have put on a couple of pounds recently which I will shift by cutting back on carbohydrates)  I watched some of the BBC executives being questioned by a House of Commons committee and as this was ‘live’ it was pretty interesting viewing. Earlier, I had accessed some of the liberal American podcasts who have convinced themselves that Trump is deranged and getting worse. They are citing as evidence the fact that it appears that Trump has paid several unscheduled visits to a clinic and has had at least one MRI scan performed, probably on his brain, according to this media who were quoting an ex-White House doctor. My Droitwich friend passes quite close to my house when she comes to pick up her boys from Bromsgrove (public) school and so we agreed a quick 20 minutes which absolutely flashed by. But she had prepared a special lunch of some eggs and beans in a curry sauce which I may have for my tea tonight, or more probably when  return home from Pilates the next day. I am in the business of trawling through past issues of the newspaper to see if any articles are worth saving but there are quite a lot of Christmas offers of various kinds which vie for attention. I have one or two things lined up for me to catch up on, not least the edited highlights of the England vs. Argentina rugby match played over the weekend. Sky Arts are putting on a special programme on the highlights of the life of Pavarotti but at an rather ungodly hour from about 11.pm -1.00pm but I might indulge in some of it before I drift off to sleep this evening. There is an announcement today of a new national holiday which the government are proposing. A new ‘national day’ to honour victims and survivors of terrorism will be added to the calendar from next year, it has been revealed. The annual commemoration will fall on 21st August, and will be marked in a different place each year to recognise the widespread impact of terrorism around the country. It comes after a 12-week public consultation showed 91% supported the plan for a national day, and 84% strongly supported the proposal. But the question of the timing of a new national holiday has to be raised because it is arguable whether 21st August is a suitable date given the proximity to the end of the month August Bank Holiday. Most people would value a national holiday sometime in mid-autumn so there is still a huge, holiday-free gap between August and Christmas.

Yesterday was the end to a very different weekend but a very enjoyable one nonetheless. After her party, my Droitwich friend joined me in the morning and we made ourselves an instant meal of some high quality sausages (regarded  locally as being some of the best available) and some instant mashed potato, made somewhat more palatable using butter, whole cream milk and a couple of eggs. We were both determined to have a pretty lazy day in each other’s company and that we did before she left as her boys were returning home after a weekend away with their father. As we had a rather magnificent breakfast, neither of us felt particularly hungry throughout the day and we just sustained ourselves on bits-and-bobs from the fridge.  In the afternoon, I popped down to Waitrose in order to pick up a copy of my Sunday newspaper but was not surprised to see that they were all sold out, So I trekked onto our local garage and my luck seemed to be in because I picked up the very last copy. Then on returning home, I cooked my friend and I a very traditional English meal. Throughout the day, I had a ham joint slowly cooking in the slow cooker and I parboiled some carrots which together with some petit pois, would be given a quick hot roasting in oil with a dollop of honey added to glaze the carrots. My friend had not tasted the new kale called ‘Cavolo Nero’ so I showed her how this was to be prepared and then after some washing it only needs about six minutes in the microwave. I prepared a fairly thick onion gravy to which the slices of ham were added and then we partook of a very traditional ‘meat and two veg’ in the late afternoon before she departed for her own home later on.  My friend had long standing social commitments with groups of friends in London for the next two weekends so the pleasant weekend we have spent together is not likely to be repeated for about another three weekends but we will still grab the opportunities to have quick get-togethers as and when the occasion arises over the next few days. The TV shows we had watched were not necessarily my first choice: ‘Get me Out of Here – I’m a celebrity’ on ITV but it was reasonably entertaining.

The Ukrainian situation is fast evolving. Alarmed by the one sidedness of the American-Russian plan, the Europeans have put forward a 28 point peace plan of their own. Perhaps surprisingly, the Americans have indicated that they are prepared to countenance a degree of flexibility and there is recognition that all proposed plans need to evolve. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is indicating both a degree of pragmatism and also some optimism that that there has been substantial progress in discussions over the future of Ukraine. Although it looks like fairly early days yet, the shape of a deal might be that the Ukraine gives up the portions of its state already overrun by the Russians but that Nato and the US will provide some sort of guarantees against further invasions or incursions by Russia. Although Russia is slowly gaining territory, international sanctions are biting and it could be that both sides have got a little war-weary and just want the war to end. There is a long way to go yet, but it looks as though the log jam over negotiations is slowly starting to break up.
 
The coming week is bound to be dominated in the UK political scene by the forthcoming budget. It seems likely that the so-called stealth taxes will remain, by not allowing the levels at which people start to pay tax to rise, then the total amount of ‘take’ from income tax increases, albeit at a rather smaller rate. Taxes, and particularly taxes on income, presents difficulties for all of the political parties, On the right of the political spectrum, taxes are regarded as a disincentive to savings and investment and there is a desire to have a low tax-smaller state spending society. But this has political dangers not least because of the nation’s commitment to the NHS and, to a lesser extent, those parts of the welfare state seen as spent on those ‘deserving’ it, such as pensioners. So, in practice, the political right would not dare to cut taxes too far as the corresponding reduction in welfare spending might spell electoral suicide. On the political left, there is a natural tendency to rase taxes to finance the welfare state but equally there is a recognition that international currency markets do not have to be spooked by state spending seen as excessive and the political left feel that they have to prove that they are not fiscally incompetent by not controlling the overall level of government spending. But there are radical measures that need to be undertaken to reform the UK’s extraordinarily tax system with seemingly high levels of tax offset by reliefs, allowances and thresholds. One of these would be to tax most of us by the land we occupy which would mean that wealthy land owners and the owners of very large houses would contribute more to the Exchequer. Another reform would be to radically reform business rates and, indeed, domestic rates that have needed some revisions for years but no government would get around to it. Another reform, that would never happen in the UK, There is always the possibility as well that there are new and, as yet, unexploited services that could be taxed. For example a £1 delivery charge on each item would yield about 750-800 millions a year, before extra taxes on Amazon itself were moderated. Rather than raise taxes, there is always the possibility that spending by the state, and particularly on welfare budgets, needs to be a prime focus. One way of saving money is to make the ‘triple lock’ into a ‘double lock’ for pensioners and, in view of the fact, that they have done pretty well over the past few years compared with the rest of the population. As for the ‘war on waste’, if there had been any very evident sources of waste of public money, this has almost certainly been found and then eliminated during the years of austerity we have had for the past decade or so. Those in regular contact with social service departments will know how ‘hollowed out’ these departments have been over the past few years but the massively increasing Universal Credit budget is not an easy problem to resolve given the degree of mental illness now in evidence since the COVID-19  epidemic.

When I awoke yesterday, it was about 6.00am but ClassicFM was playing the 2nd movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 so I luxuriated in a warm bed whilst this was played plus some Holst and other pleasant music before I actually got up at just after 7.00am to a house that seemed remarkably less cold than in the last few days. Now that I have a fully functioning central heating boiler, this is not really surprising but welcome. I suspect that we shall have one last week of ‘non-Christmas’ music before ClassicFM will start to let rip on Monday, 1st December to signal the start of the festive season. However, this theory was soon to be confounded because as I was exercising and listening to ClassicFM, the presenter announced that the Christmas music was due to commence on Tuesday, 25th as it was one month to go before Christmas Day itself. I am reminding myself that I may need to make some preparations if we are going to go ahead and have a party for some of Meg’s one time carers as we did so successfully last year.  The political news this morning is dominated by the news that Majorie Taylor-Greene who was one of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters but became, after the delay in the release of the Epstein files, one of his fiercest critics has decided to resign her seat in Congress. According to the US constitution, an election has to take place so either a special election will be called or the seat may be kept vacant until the primaries in 2026. The seat is staunchly Republican but the really interesting question is whether her seat will be filled by a MAGA (‘Make America Great Again’) candidate or whether the Republicans will choose a non-MAGA Republican. This might be an interesting indication of the current mood within the country. We also have interesting political questions starting to bubble up this week as a make-or-break and much anticipated budget is due to be delivered within the next few days. Seventeen months into office, Keir Starmer has the lowest popularity ratings of any prime minister since records began, and there is now open conversation in his party about whether he is right to lead Labour into the next general election, and he is heading into a very tempestuous budget in which he might end up breaking manifesto pledges to working people. Being abroad so much has eared him the soubriquet of ‘Never Here, Keir’ and whilst it is true that Prime Ministers can help to broker trade deals which the country badly needs, his absence when the country is facing so may problems is being noted. During the day, much of the High Street in Bromsgrove is being devoted to a ‘Christmas Fayre’ type event which means that parking space may well be at a premium. So I will probably wander down slowly and have a coffee in Waitrose before I wander along the High Street stopping ‘en route’ to buy some specialist sausages which I had promised my Droitwich friend as a special treat when I see her in the next day or so. Having thought that this month of November needed to be endured rather than enjoyed, I am pleasantly surprised by how quickly the month has flown by. Although I had been invited to a special concert to be given in Wolverhampton on Saturday, I have decided to forego this as navigating through a town and districts I do not know on a cold winter evening may be too much of a stretch for me at the moment.

Although it was a fairly cold and rainy day, I decided to walk down into town thinking the car parks would be full to bursting and the streets very busy. But in the event, the streets were fairly quiet. I looked in the cafe where I occasionally meet with some friends and not seeing them there called in the local butchers to get some high quality sausages for lunchtime tomorrow. Then I called in at Wetherspoons and saw a couple of friends I have not seen for some time whilst having one of their cut price bacon and egg breakfast butties.After lunch, I watched an episode of ‘Endeavour’ which I think I had seen about twice before but was always worth another viewing. Later in the afternoon, I treated myself to the latest episode of the David Olusoga series on ‘Empire’ and then awaited for the arrival of my friend who is going to use my house as a changing room before she goes off to a huge ball, organised by her son’s school where she was going to eat, drink and dance away the evening. Then we shall treat ourselves to a sausage brunch at some time during the following day.

Donald Trump is up to his usual negotiating tactic with the war in Ukraine. Having hatched up a plan with the Russians, he has given the Ukrainians a few days to accept it or otherwise all American support for the Ukraine would be withdrawn. But the Ukrainians and the Europeans have reacted badly to all of this and pushed back against the Trump plan. Donald Trump has said his current peace plan for Ukraine is not his final offer. Speaking outside the White House to reporters, the US president was asked if the 28-point plan was the ‘final offer’.’No, not by far We would like to get the peace, it should have happened a long time ago. The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened. If I was president it would have never happened. We are trying to get it ended. One way or another, we have to get it ended.’ At the end of the day, the Ukrainians are not likely to concede land to Russia and a massive loss of sovereignty and will probably fight on, with the support of the Europeans and so the war will probably grind on, The Russians, though, are gradually winning the ground way having many more men and munitions to the Ukrainians who are fighting almost to the last man.

As the Christmas season is almost upon us, we are threatened with rail strikes over the Christmas period. I went scurrying to my booking forms but so far I believe that I might not be directly effected but one can never be absolutely sure because after a strike, it is possible that trains and their crews are in the ‘wrong’ places so the disruption could spread to non strike days. It looks as though ross Country Trains (the service I hope to use) is to be affected so I will have to keep my fingers crossed.

Yesterday the report into the COVID enquiry was published and it could reasonably be described as scathing. All four UK governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat posed by COVID-19 or the urgency of the response the pandemic required, a damning report published on Thursday has claimed. Baroness Heather Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, described the response to the pandemic as ‘too little, too late’. Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved during the first wave of COVID-19 had a mandatory lockdown been introduced a week earlier, the inquiry also found. Noting how a ‘lack of urgency’ made a mandatory lockdown ‘inevitable’, the report references modelling data to claim there could have been 23,000 fewer deaths during the first wave in England had it been introduced a week earlier. The UK government first introduced advisory restrictions on 16 March 2020, including self-isolation, household quarantine and social distancing. Had these measures been introduced sooner, the report states, the mandatory lockdown which followed from 23 March might not have been necessary at all.The report says lockdown could have been avoided if steps such as social distancing and isolating those with symptoms along with members of their household had been introduced earlier than mid-March 2020. But by the time ministers took action it was already too late and a lockdown was inevitable, it says. By the end of January 2020 it ‘should have been clear that the virus posed a serious and immediate threat’, while February 2020 was ‘a lost month’ and the lack of urgency overall in government was ‘inexcusable’, the inquiry found. Voluntary measures were brought in on 16 March 2020, followed by the full stay-at home lockdown seven days late. But lockdown a week earlier could have saved thousands of lives. Bringing in lockdown a week earlier on 16 March would have meant 23,000 fewer deaths in England in the first wave, modelling suggests. This would have equated to 48% fewer deaths in the first wave. But the report does not suggest the overall death toll for the pandemic – 227,000 in the UK by the time it was declared over in 2023 – would have been reduced by an earlier lockdown. That is very difficult to tell, as it depends on a variety of other factors that could have reduced or increased the number of deaths as the pandemic progressed. Even at the time, there was commentary to the effect that the government appeared to be dithering and, of course, a Conservative government led by Boris Johnson was forced to consider bringing in a dramatic increase in state activity over the lives of ordinary citizens. But this is a case where political ideology took precedence over action to forestall the pandemic. It is true to say that all governments all over the globe were forced into activities and policies to meet a threat which was totally out of their experience and where the scientific evidence was still evolving. But there are families all over the country who lost their loved ones and were not even allowed under the funeral restrictions to bid their loved ones a proper and dignified farewell. At the time, Meg and I were walking down to Sanders Park just over a kilometre away from us and we witnessed, on at least two occasions, elderly people being transported into the backs of ambulances and tearful relatives having to wave goodbye to their relatives as the ambulance departed. There was collateral damage as well. Our good friend, Clive, who played his trumpet at out 50th wedding anniversary celebrations, was receiving some chemotherapy which held his advancing leukaemia at bay but when this treatment ceased, as Clive could no longer attend the outpatients department of our local hospital, then his life was cut short but not by COVID itself.

We had a bit of domestic drama this morning with which we could have done without. My Droitwich friend and I thought that the house felt a little cold and when we investigated why this should be the case, we discovered that the central heating boiler was completely shut down and unresponsive, with not even a display on the display panel. After urgent consultation with my son who was down in Watford, we checked over all of the evident things such as the water pressure being too low and making the boiler shut down automatically to checking the RCB (Residual Circuit Breaker) to see whether a circuit had been flipped. Our normal central heating firm who are just down the road and who actually installed the boiler seem less and less responsive these days so  my son gave me the contact details of a central heating engineer who works on his own and who was excellent at servicing my son’s installation.  After a telephone call and the transmission of some of my details via a text message, I was delighted that within a couple of hours the engineer turned up and, as it turned out, he was scheduled to make another visit in a village just down the road. He diagnosed a blown fuse and then whilst he had the boiler all made accessible, he gave it a service and could not find any evident cause for the blown fuse. He checked out the other parts of our ‘combi system’ and, in general, gave a service that could only be described as excellent in every way. As my friend and I were feeling pretty cold as the boiler had been out of action for at least 24 hours and the whole house had cooled down on one of the coldest days of the year, my friend who is an excellent cook and enjoys cooking,  made a super brunch for the two of us which actually helped to sustain us for most of the day. My friend and I had to re-schedule our work and non-work activities for the rest of the day so I arranged some heating via one of our portable oil heaters in our dining room and my friend could carry on doing her professional work for most of the rest of the day until the time for her to pick up one of her sons from the school down the road. My friend had had a rather difficult video-call meeting with an American ‘boss’ of hers who seemed to be making all kinds of unreasonable demands so I managed to calm my friend down after she was pretty incandescent after her transatlantic calls. So this is the reason why we are such good friends because we help each other to negotiate some of the annoying tribulations that come our way. For the next two weekends, my friend has other commitments in London with work colleagues but we are seizing the opportunities that are open to us so we made some plans to see each other over the weekend to which I am evidently looking forward.

Yesterday we woke up to a temperature of -2º but I think that the wind may be very slightly less strong and thus it may feel a tad less cold – but it is still bitter. For a reason that escapes me, I started to think about the term ‘yummy mummy’ and wondered whether it was a derogatory term or one with which some women would quite enjoy. I am going to try it out on my Droitwich friend when next I see her and she how she feels about it and indeed whether she feels flattered or insulted. From what I can gather, in its neutral sense it refers to mothers who are still sexually attractive, fashionable and take a pride in their appearance and therefore provide a sharp contrast to the ‘dowdy’ image sometimes associated with motherhood. On the other hand, I did come across one interpretation with decidedly negative interpretations which is funny: ‘Yummy mummies come from Primrose Hill, they seat their bratty children in pushchairs the size of cars, they never wear sunglasses except on top of their head, wear scary amounts of beige, bring their own carrot sticks and celery sticks to the pub, and are oblivious to all other people inside and outside their field of vision.’In any case, this term has entirely dropped out of popular culture and probably the vast majority of the younger generation would not know how o react to the term. Turning to much more serious matters, Donald Trump has now signed into law the directive that all of the Epstein files should be released by the FBI within 20 days. Some of the details that must be released are extraordinarily wide ranging and would include flight logs and travel record of any aircraft, vessel or vehicle operated by Epstein, individuals named or referenced in connection with Epstein’s criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity or plea agreements, or investigations and even material relating to Ghislaine Maxwell. In passing the legislation, Trump went on one of his usual rants casting blame upon the Democrats whenever he could and repeating the extraordinary claim that the whole was a ‘hoax’. But we shall certainly see prominent Democrats exposed as well as Republicans so this might prove to be an unwelcome Christmas present for many members of the American elite. On the domestic political front, Westminster is bracing for the publication of the COVID inquiry’s module two report, which is about political decision-making during the pandemic. It is expected to focus not just on the decisions of key politicians, but also those of key officials, many of whom are still in government. Again, this is expected to make uncomfortable reading for many but it is taking far too long for this necessary post-COVID to take place and it could be that another pandemic overwhelms all of us before we have learnt the lessons of the last one. As I did my shopping the day before, it will be interesting to see how today pans out and how many of us will turn up for our weekly ‘Tai Chi’ class. Thee are about a dozen of us with about three men and the rest women and most people find it extremely relaxing (although I do not think I am quite at that stage yet).  Co-ordinating the breathing with the movements is a skill to be mastered but no doubt this will come in time.  I found that today I was a little further forward on my ‘Tai Chi’ journey because I observed closely the particular move that our tutor was making and then closed my eyes and did what felt right for me (which is what she instructed me to do at the conclusion of our class last week) After the class was over, my banker friend was not in evidence for which I was secretly relieved as I needed to go to the garage to check out my type pressures. I had an instrument reading which told me that my type pressures were low so I went to the garage and checked over the pressures. The trouble is that even though you may have re-inflated the tyres, the system does not automatically remove the ‘low type pressure warning’ system from the console so it feels as though you have not done anything. I know that there will be a setting somewhere to turn this warning ‘off’ but I have not managed to find it yet – I know that in the Volvo, I had the same issue and it was a little complicated to find. I got back home after my class because I knew that my Droitwich friend was due to call around and she was going to work on her laptop in my house, which arrangement ]we had set up the other day. Then the hairdresser called around which I actually had remembered from my planning board. Later on in the day, my chiropodist called around, again via a pre-planned appointment so all in all, this was a day of comings and goings. My friend had to go off to a doctor’s appointment whilst I was left at home as a sort of ‘house husband’ starting to cook the simple meal which we had scoped out for ourselves earlier in the day. Later in the day over our meal we can no doubt unburden ourselves a little to each other which is why we are good friends and enjoy each other’s company.

There is a report circulating that the USA and Russia between them have been negotiating a plan to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This plan has been hatched up without any reference to the Ukrainians or any other European nation and looks as though it is going to ‘reward’ Russia by granting Russia swathes of territory over and above that which has been occupied by it in any case. This arrangement cannot possibly work and, no doubt, the Ukrainians will say that they have to fight on, with the support of Western European allies but with America totally taking the Russian’s  side. Even if this plan were to be enforced on the Ukraine, it is not at all clear that there is any force that would discourage the Russians from seizing even more territory as the Americans would never put the boots of their soldiers ‘on the ground’ between the two opponents. So we have all of the makings of a conflict that may well rumble on for years but one has the horrible premonition that there is no way that Russia will get much of what it wants, despite the cost to the Russian economy and military.