Yesterday, I woke up to a really cold and icy day and although the temperature is about 2° at the moment, the BBC weather app tells me that with the icy wind, the temperature will feel about -7° because of the wind-chill factor. Overnight, we have heard of the extraordinary developments in the USA. After Trump’s volte-face (about face) over the release of the Epstein files, the House of Representatives  voted in an extraordinary vote of 427:1 to release the files. Now the only source of opposition could be the Senate but in view of the near unanimous vote of the House of Representatives the Senate deployed a special procedure to also pass the bill but without a vote I think the Senate majority leader puts this to the Senate and if there are no objections then the bill is assumed to have been passed) So now that it looks as though the bill to release the Epstein files should be on the desk of Donald Trump within hours. For his part, Trump has publicly committed to signing the bill so suddenly after weeks of opposition by Trump and the Republicans, we may soon seen the release of the files. Actually ‘soon’ is a relative word because the FBI has 30 days to release the documents and it could be that a certain amount of legitimate redaction has to take place e.g. in the case of other victims or cases still currently before the courts. The Democrats cannot afford to be in too celebratory a mood because many senior Democrats, possibly including ex-President Bill Clinton himself, probably feature somewhere in the files. The media are calling this the ‘Epstein elite’ and it casts a sorry light that so many rich and powerful Americans are caught up in this huge political scandal. Not particularly subscribing to conspiracy theories, one is forced to wonder whether Epstein was actually murdered in gaol (officially his death was recorded as suicide) to prevent further revelations. On the domestic front, the Scots are celebrating having secured a win over Denmark and hence a place in the football World Cup for the first time since 1998. The match was shown live last night but I was occupied elsewhere and did not watch it. Some extraordinary goals were scored which were really spectacular. The Scots took the lead after three minutes with a bicycle kick (the player is facing he wrong way but kicks it blind, backwards, towards the goal) The Scots needed to win but at full time, the score was 2:2 and the Scots needed a win to qualify. The Scots then scored two goals in injury time to win the match but the last goal was extraordinary as well. As the Danes were pressing hard for an equaliser, the Danish goalkeeper advanced out of his goal and a Scottish substitute player saw that the goalkeeper was off his line and with an extraordinary kick from the half way line, actually lobbed the goalkeeper and scored the final goal. Of course, the Scots may not progress very far in the World Cup but just to be one of the World Cup finalists is a sort of victory in itself.

In the morning, after I had breakfasted I made my way down to the Methodist Centre where I availed myself of a toasted teacake and a cup of coffee. As it was so very cold this morning, I made the usual jape about it being cold enough to ‘freeze the balls of a brass monkey’ and then delighted in telling people from whence this explanation arose (although some complain that even this conventional explanation involving cannon balls and sailing ships is actually erroneous.) After I returned home, I cooked myself a lunch from within the depths of the freezer which happened to be a couple of spare ribs and some potato. I added some petit pois  and an onion bahjee left over from the weekend. The afternoon was quite a lazy one as the cold weather always to make me feel very tired. I received a telephone message from my Droitwich friend and, to cut a long story short, it looks as though she might be able to pop by sometime tomorrow. As she brings her laptop with her, she can utilise my broadband connection to do little bursts of work which we intersperse with some chat and some cooking. I have joked with her that we are the living  reenactment of the famous wartime film ‘Brief Encounter’ filmed on Carnforth (Lancaster) railway station, where the principal characters seized whatever opportunities they could for their ‘Brief Encounter’ (which were usually in the station buffet) So I decided to go out and do my normal weekly shop in the afternoon to release some time from tomorrow morning. The store was so nice and quiet that I might be tempted to do this on Wednesday afternoons in the future.

A new wind record has been set for Britain, with enough electricity generated from turbines to power 22 million homes, the system operator has said. The mark of 22,711 megawatts (MW) was set at 7.30pm on 11 November, beating the previous high for wind power generation of 22,253 MW set on 18 December last year. At the time, wind was providing 43.6% of Britain’s electricity, enough to keep around three-quarters of British homes powered, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) said. The country had experienced windy conditions, particularly in the north of England and Scotland. This must be a significant milestone in our move away from fossil fuels (such as il, coal and gas) as a way of generating the country’s  power needs. Bu generating the electricity might be one thing but getting it to where it is needed is quite another. Given the climate and topography of the UK much power is generate din the more northerly regions but it needs to be redistributed towards the more populous south. But our National grid system is badly antiquated and is in sore need of much more investment. The National Grid needs more investment to upgrade its infrastructure for the energy transition, with estimates suggesting that up to £60 billion is needed by 2030 to modernise the grid, connect renewable energy sources, and meet future demand. While National Grid has announced its own large-scale investment plans, organisations like the National Energy System Operator (NESO) and industry experts argue that existing investment levels have not kept pace with the needs for decarbonisation.

Yesterday did feel a lot colder when I leapt out of my bed at 6.45 conscious of the fact that there were several domestic jobs, not least the clothes washing that needed to be done.  But as I eschew ironing in all of its manifestations, I always buy shirts these days which used to be called ‘drip dry’ but the modern terminology used, I believe by Marks and Spencer, is ‘Easy Care’ which means that once I take them out of the dryer they are pretty crease free. I then hang them over the back of a chair in the kitchen to encourage the few remaining creases to drop out and then transfer them to our drying room (a magnificent little room near to my upstairs bedroom which is always warm because it houses a large hot water cylinder as part of out ‘Combi’ domestic heating system and it is excellent to give clothes their final drying off). I also store my towels and sheets on the wooden shelving in this little room and it is one of the really good features of this house which I would sadly miss if and when I move elsewhere.

In the House of Commons yesterday the Home Secretary gave a barn-storming performance when she announced a radical change of policy to overcome the ‘migrants boats’ crisis. She also used the most unparliamentary language telling the Reform party leader, Nigel Farage to ‘sod off’- she may have been asked by the speaker to withdraw this unparliamentary language but once uttered the impact (and the political damage) has already been done. But it is fair comment to add that the change in policy announced by Shabana Mahmood contain sweeping changes to the UK’s asylum system, including rowing back on guarantees of financial support. The tough proposals have been welcomed by the Tories and Reform and left some Labour MPs feeling uneasy.  Ms Mahmood announced a new direction in Labour’s plan to crack down on asylum seekers. The ‘restoring order and control’ plan includes

– The removal of more families with children – either voluntarily through cash incentives up to £3,000, or by force
– Quadrupling the time successful asylum seekers must wait to claim permanent residency in the UK, from five years to 20
– Removing the legal obligation to provide financial support to asylum seekers, so those with the right to work but choose not to will receive no support
– Setting up a new appeals body to significantly speed up the time it takes to decide whether to refuse an asylum application
– Reforming how the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is interpreted in immigration cases;
– Banning visas for countries refusing to accept deporteesAnd the establishment of new safe and legal refugee routes.

The parliamentary arithmetic is going to be interesting here. Although the `Labour party after its huge election victory has a majority of about 148 seats, there is bound to be a huge rebellion particularly from those newly elected MPs representing constituencies in the North and Midlands where the majorities are small and there is a higher concentration of ethnic minority voters (more sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants). Actually, although the term ‘illegal immigrants’ is in widespread use across the whole of the political spectrum, including the Labour party, it is not technically accurate.  The term ‘illegal immigrant’ is inaccurate and misleading because no human being is illegal; rather, they may be undocumented or have ‘irregular’ status. Many people are in a country without legal authorisation due to complex immigration systems, visa overstays, or seeking asylum, which are not always a result of criminal intent. For example, someone who enters on a valid visa and overstays is considered to have an ‘irregular’ status, not an ‘illegal’ one. But politicians of all political colours continue to use the term ‘illegal’ because it strikes a chord with large swathes of the electorate.

I was just about well and truly up and some of my early morning routines undertaken when my son called around and we exchanged news of or various social activities and comings-and-goings over the last few days. It was good to see him as we had been in contact for a few days but later in the week he is going to visit some of his wife’s relatives and sometime after, he and my daughter-in-law both a brief holiday booked in Spain. He had not departed for very long when my Droitwich friend called around and whilst she worked on he laptop I got myself properly up and dressed. Then my friend worked a little on her laptop, we chatted a lot and then made ourselves a brunch  based on eggs. One of  my friend’s saucepans had completely come to a natural end and was only fit to be thrown away but fortunately,  I have in stock some none-stick saucepans which are rarely used so I was happy to donate some of these excess pans to a home where they would be used extensively. Then my friend and I both had to dash off, she to her yoga class and me to my Pilates class but no doubt we can snatch a (cooking together) opportunity in a few days’ time. After I returned from my Pilates class,  I made myself a quick lunch opening a tin of lamb and vegetable soup (more like a stew actually) which made for a quick lunch. After lunch, I unintentionally started to watch one of those ‘Escape to the Country’ programmes much beloved of afternoon TV producers. But this aroused my curiosity because a couple were looking for cottages in and around the small villages in and around Harrogate in North Yorkshire which was the area in which I grew up and therefore knew reasonably well. Some of the cottages were stunning and were generally furnished very tastefully to  reflect modern styles. Although the programme presenters always tease the audience and the potential viewers/buyers  with the revelation of the asking price, I was amazed to discover that some bijou cottages were actually on the market for anything up to £100k less than I thought they were worth. Prices of houses have risen sharply in what is termed the ‘Golden Triangle’ of York, Leeds and Harrogate but perhaps the houses on the TV programme were slightly outside this ‘Golden Triangle’ but you can see what couple from London are tempted to buy because the price might be one quarter that they would have to pay in the London area.

I awoke to a cold, clear November morning but with the knowledge that the next few days were promising to be even colder. But at least snow is not in prospect for us at the moment although it may be for the Scots. Meanwhile, I can reflect back happily into a weekend filled with beneficial social activity as I had visited my University of  Winchester friends on Friday but then had the benefit of the company of my Droitwich friend  over the weekend, so this should set me up for the week ahead.

In an extraordinary volte-face, Donald Trump has urged Republicans to vote for the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein – a reversal of his previous opposition to the move. The president said on Truth Social that politicians from his own party should back the move. One email described Mr Trump as ‘that dog that has not barked… Virginia spent hours at my house with him’. The president has always denied any wrongdoing and said he fell out with the disgraced financier way before his crimes against underage girls came to light. It is very hard to discern what has caused Trump to change his mind here unless it is a recognition that in the long run, the truth will out and therefore it is better to back a move for the release of the files. So it looks as though the House of Representatives (analogous to the House of Commons) may vote to release the files but that is not the end of the matter because there is still a Senate dominated Senate where the result of any vote is much less clear. But in an interesting reflection of how American democracy works, it may well be that any Republican senators who vote for the release of the Epstein files only do so because they are coming to the end of their term of office and do not fear a future rejection by  an electorate where MAGA (Make America Great Again) is still a significant force. But there are clear signs that the MAGA movement itself is split on the issue. A growing number of Republican lawmakers and loyal Trump supporters also want the documents made public. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch MAGA loyalist, backed the petition that proposed holding the vote and provoked a vicious backlash from the president – who labelled her a traitor and a ranting lunatic, all of this despite the fact that in the past she was an ultra-loyal Trump supporter. Meanwhile on the UK political scene, the nation is going to witness almost draconian reforms to our immigration system modelled upon Denmark’s approach and a tax raising budget is only now about a fortnight away. Each morning, I listen to ClassicFM and the debate is raising its head as to exactly when the season of Christmas music will start. I suspect that the day will suggest itself as 1st December falls upon a Monday and this might be the appropriate point at which suddenly we will be exposed to a torrent of carols. I think that in the past, ClassicFM has labelled itself as the ‘home of Christmas music’ so we may have a fortnight of respite yet.

As the day was a beautiful fine day but the weather was cold and crisp, I decided almost on the spur of the moment to go to Droitwich (which I used to visit with Meg in any case) and enjoy a walk by the canal.In addition of course, by parking on the Waitrose car park I could pick up my newspaper and get my ‘free’ cup of coffee  as well. So this I did and had a walk alongside the canal (or it may be a canalised portion of a river called the ‘Salwarpe’). This was pleasant enough but the murkiness of the water and one dead fish floating near the surface led me to conclude that the river is probably as polluted as most of the other rivers in the country.  So I had given myself a little excursion for the day  so I came home and texted/phoned my friend before I consumed the remains of the chicken curry prepared over the weekend. for my midday meal. Tomorrow is the day when I undertake my Pilates class and I am hoping that once again we have a fairly clear and fine day, although I know it will be cold. I want to give the back lawn its final, final cut of the season and to ‘winterise’ the mower which means ensuring that the old oil is removed (and this can only be done when the engine is hot) and that no fuel remains in the tank.  I have had this Swedish mulching mower longer than ay other mower that I have ever possessed but every year it is a statement of faith. A crucial spring governing the speed of the mower has become detached and long lost but I have an arrangements with what I call ‘girly bands ‘(used by girls to keep their hair tidy of they have longish hair) and this arrangement has worked all right during the course of this year. It may seem odd to mow the grass for a final time at this time of year but it as the advantage that any dried leaves on the surface of the lawn are chopped into smaller pieces which worms can then drag down into the soil to help fertilise and replenish the lawn.

A podcaster well known to American audiences named Dillon, predicted the president will now spend the remainder of his second term ‘talking about the ballroom that he is building at the White House’ for which he controversially demolished the East Wing. Trump ‘will trail off, he’ll get older, he’s adorning the White House in gold,’ he added, also predicting that Trump’s once association with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is ‘gonna suck the oxygen out of a lot of this.’ So there is now a degree of speculation that already we are talking about a ‘lame-duck presidency’ even though we still have three years of Presidency yet to run.  It is probable, though, that Trump’s age, over-weight status and generally poor health record may well force an early end to the second term of his presidency. And, of course we ‘Trump Mark II’ or the current vice-president J D Vance poised to take over.

So I contemplate that we are now in the second half of November and I swear that this month has absolutely flown by. What can make the winters seem particularly long and aggressive in the UK is if we have a spell of bad weather, and particularly snow in November and December. By all accounts, though, after  the winds and associated rainfall of storm ‘Claudia’ which disrupted many of our travel plans last week, we should now anticipate quite a blast of colder, Arctic air which is going to sweep across the country starting on Monday. I watched the BBC longer term weather forecast for the week ahead and it looks as though although the colder air will bring snow to Scotland, the rest of England will escape this but we should expect blasts of much colder air, made to feel even colder by the wind-chill factor associated with the strong winds that will accompany it. And now to more domestic matters. My very good  Droitwich friend called around in the morning and we spent some time making onion bhajis of an authentic variety, although I must confess that I found an onion bhaji pre-prepared mixture in a supermarket packet the other day which we used as a base. As might be inferred, my friend absolutely loves cooking and up to a point, so do I so we have fallen into a pattern where we prepare, cook and then eat some meals together at the weekends when it fits in with other domestic arrangements. I have discovered that my friend absolutely loves ‘bœuf à la Bourguignonne’ which was a signature dish that Meg and I used to prepare together and I remember making some years back for Meg’s cousins when we had invited them over for a meal. This is the kind of dish which you would not make for oneself alone but is more of a special occasion dish so it looks as though  have let myself for preparing this in a fortnights time. No doubt, this will be followed in due course by one of the vegetable pies that I used to cook regularly but, again and sadly, I have got out of the habit of cooking this. My culinary habits when Meg was alive was always dashing into the kitchen and preparing anything that could be done quickly which doe not lend itself to any ‘haute cuisine’ It used to be said that for the majority of the population, the weekends were used as a way of recovering from the stresses of the week whereas those with a very full, and should I say alcohol-laden, weekend reversed this pattern by using the weeks to get over the weekends. I can remember well a former colleagues of mine at De Montfort University, who was quite a keen Radio 4 listener explaining to me how, after the edition of ‘Gardener’s Question Time’ which used to be broadcast at about 2.00pm early on a Sunday afternoon he always had a very heavy heart. This was because he realised that the weekend was effectively over because Sunday afternoon and evening were spent preparing lectures and teaching materials for the forthcoming week. After all, if you have a 9.00am lecture to give on a Monday morning, it has to have been prepared beforehand. And, upon reflection, the part of my teaching career that I really did not enjoy was the marking. So if one had a class of say, 70 students and each assignment, even working at speed took half and hour first to mark and then to write up written comments, we are talking about 35 hours of extra work that had to be fitted in somehow. The ‘somehow’ actually meant staying up late night and night, fuelled by tea and biscuits to get the extra work done as there was an expectation that work needed to be handed back within about a two week turn around time. 

In the course of the morning, my University of Birmingham phoned up to see if  was available for our normal Sunday morning get together over coffee and I took my Droitwich friend, who was with me, along to meet him and we shared a coffee overlooking a sort of outdoors water sports centre as there are precious few things open on Sunday morning. Then my Droitwich friend and I came home to prepare a huge cauldron of an Indian curry. My role in all of this was mainly to prepare vegetables and then to sit at the feet of the master whilst I learnt the authentic way in which an Asian curry should be prepared. Lunch was a bit delayed by a long phone call from a family member but nonetheless we eventually enjoyed our meal even thought we could easily have fed a family of seven with it. Then we crashed out in the afternoon and watched some TV together, I was delighted to see the highlights pf the New Zealand vs. England rugby match in which the English team were victorious for the first time on home soil since 2012. The All-Blacks opened the match by scoring two tries but then George Ford helped to redress the balance with two dropkick goals. After that, the England team were magnificent in the second half of the game, eventually winning comfortably 33:19.  Interestingly enough, I had spent some time in the afternoon going through past editions of ‘The Times‘ to see if there were any articles  worth saving and I did glance at an article by a sports writer written some days ago which suggested that a victory against New Zealand was well within the grasp of the English team who are enjoying a good run of form and some excellent tactics to boot.

It looks as though the Home Secretary is to announce a massive policy shift on migration tomorrow morning. Shabana Mahmood said illegal immigration was causing ‘huge divides in the UK. I do believe we need to act if we are to retain public consent for having an asylum system at all.’  Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Ms Mahmood said the government would set out changes to the asylum system in a bid to reduce the pull factor for those arriving in the UK via small boat. The home secretary has been looking to Denmark for inspiration, where there are tighter rules on family reunions and restrictions on how long refugees can stay. Measures that are expected to be announced on Monday include changing the rules so that people who are granted asylum in the UK will only be allowed to stay temporarily, and will have their refugee status subject to regular review. The statutory legal duty to provide asylum seeker support, including housing and weekly allowances, is expected to be revoked. It is almost certain that this will go down very well with the electorate as a whole but extremely badly with the Labour Party so we can foresee plenty of ructions ahead.

I think that yesterday could fairly be described as a day of recovery after, as they say, ‘burning the candle at both ends’ When the alarm woke me at 7.00am this morning, I promptly turned over and went back to sleep for another hour and a half only finally getting up at 8.30am which is almost unprecedently late for me these days. I suppose my body must have needed the extra sleep and there is nothing urgent to occupy myself this morning in an case. The day before yesterday had been my day in Winchester to meet up with former colleagues and life-long friends and I am mighty glad that I did it , even though storm ‘Claudia’ was causing havoc on the railways. I had needed to het up early in order to catch my 8.00am train and, after a long day and a wearisome journey on the way back whereby sleep was impossible it was still way after midnight before I actually settled down for the night. As soon as I got home, I made myself some instant hot food (half a tin of spaghetti on toast with a fried egg, done in a little ‘frying pan for one I find invaluable o such occasions.) I then engaged in a series of texts with families and close friends, receiving a lot of news all round. In particular, I was anxious to get the latest news from my University of Winchester friend whose very poorly wife had been transferred into a hospital. But she seemed to be now responding to antibiotics and oxygen and my friend sent me a wonderful photograph of the way in which she had given her husband the most magnificent smile of relief when she was actually reunited with her husband, from whom she had been parted as a result of the severe flue infection which had occasioned her stay in hospital. Now all of this had got me thinking about the role of the smile in human communication because I remember exremely vividly how Meg in her declining weeks and days could only manage a flash of smile towards her carers which they appreciated immensely and made them feel very good. So I looked at the classic photograph that I have of Meg (with a smile) and then looked at other photos of friends all displaying a smile and this got me wondering whether smiles stay lodged in our term memory more so than actual words spoken.

The news in the morning is that Donald Trump has announced his intention to sue the BBC for the inappropriate edit which the BBC allowed through its quality assurance protocols in the making of a Panorama programme about Trump. The general view amongst journalists is that the BBC had no option but to issue an apology for the inappropriate edit which they have indeed done but that they ought to fiercely resist the threats of legal action y Trump and to stand by their own journalists. This is exactly what the BBC has done and so Trump finds himself in a situation where he cannot sue in the UK courts (as the action is way out of time after much more than a year) but will probably take action in a Florida court. Bit even here with a very partisan American jury, rump ma be acing an uphill battle and may well not succeed in his case so he may have ‘bittgen ff more than he can chew’ The programme in question was not ]transmitted or even viewable in the US and was way over a year ago. So, Trump is going to have to prove that a programme that Americans could not see had irrevocably ruined his reputation and caused him immense damage which is, as they say, stretching credulity to its limits. On this side of the Atlantic the view is that Trump’s reptation is so low after his convictions and proven record of a multitude of lies about practically eery subject on earth that he had no reputation capable of being damaged further. But of course an American jury will be much more well disposed towards Trump but, at the end of the day, a clever defense by the lawyers to be appointed by the BBC in defending the action might mean that Trump will lose his action and there will be a tremendous loss of face. And we must remind ourselves that Trump is famous for using the courts to go after his opponents in the media bit often this is a tactic which is not pursued to the bitter end and an out-of-court settlement is reached. It could be that minimal damages might be paid by the BBC but the actual amount kept a secret of this is possible in the Florida courts.

It took me some time to get going this morning because I needed both to exercise (Pilates style), then to shower and finally to breakfast and all on top of having got up late in the morning. By the day’s post, a new debit card had arrived so I resolved to go on the High Street and get it activated in my local branch. But the actual branch was itself shut but the ATM outside gave me a message that ‘Processing of my card was not possible’ because we all know that Banks do not work at the weekend (!) But my Droitwich friend was coming over to spend the afternoon and evening with me starting at 2.00pm so after she had arrived and we had chatted extensively we made ourselves a light lunch of Scottish Mussels in a white wine sauce that we ate with salad and some other dips. Once we had recovered from tis meal, we went to buy some superior lamb chops from a very reputable local butcher and then we put some preparations in lace for the evening meal. I went to our local church service at 5.30 and returned just before 7.00am and then we sat down to enjoy our lamb cooked in the Indian way with a lot of spices. During my absence from the house, my friend had carried on the reorganisation of the kitchen store cupboards so that we are now in a position to find what we want more easily as well as revealing the duplication of some items. After we had completed our leisurely meal we had a restful evening and then a fairly early night, which we both felt that we needed.

The big breaking political news this morning is that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, have indicated that after weeks of preparing the ground, they will not, after all, cut income tax,. It seems as though a massive backlash against breaking manifesto promises was becoming increasingly evident and, had they gone ahead with their intended measures, then a ‘putsch’ might have been organised against the two of them. But the money has to be raised from somewhere and, as an astute French statesman concerned with his nation’s finances observed centuries ago ‘the art of taxation is to extract the most amount of feathers from the goose with the least amount of hissing’ One way to raise money, albeit more slowly, is not to raise income tax thresholds so that more and more people get sucked into paying tax – the so-called ‘stealth tax’ And I suspect there may be some tinkering around with the interaction between National Insurance and tax rates. The ‘triple lock’ is, I thought doomed and could well be recast as a ‘double lock’ i.e. the second highest of 2.5%, the inflation rate and the rise in wage rates. Pensioners have been protected by Conservative governments for electoral advantages for some time now but their position, vis-a-vis the rest of the working population has improved markedly over the years. I think there is a strong case for a new tax which would absorb a lot of National Insurance, to be labelled as an ‘NHS tax’ and the population as a whole may feel disinclined to argue with this. But as I write, the announcement is relatively only a few hours old so no doubt both political pundits and tax experts will be piling in within the next few hours to speculate where the money will be found as the budget is now only about two weeks away.

Yesterday was the day when we had arranged to have a get together of former colleagues from the University of Winchester (calling ourselves the ‘Old Fogies’) and we had a lunch booked at Rick Stein’s restaurant in Winchester. The journey started off early at 8.03 from Bromsgrove but I negotiated the intricacies of the station car parking machines (one out of order and one only half working!) The journey down to Winchester was uneventful and only about 5-10 minutes delayed as the huge storm was passing overhead. I had printed out some route maps but found the restaurant easily, arriving before anybody else. In the event there were 8 of us all together and I made contact with erstwhile colleagues some of whom I had not seen for years. One had lost his wife (one of my closest colleagues, as it happened) and another had got divorced but had a new partner who lived some streets away from him. I was particularly glad to see a former professor of history and archeology who was very good to me when I first moved to Winchester but had successfully survived a very serious illness in the intervening years. So after we all had some excellent food we circulated around the table so that we could meet up with everyone as it were and we stayed in the restaurant for most of the afternoon. Then I walked back to the station with a former colleagues who was catching the London train that stopped at Fareham whilst I waited for the delayed train to Manchester Piccadilly. The train was delayed by abut 25 minutes when it arrived in Winchester and the train was full to bursting. There is a very prestigious college called Peter Symonds and many of the weekly boarders were going to Basingstoke which is the next town down the line. The female students were sitting on each other’s laps and the passageways were jammed full of standing male passengers – naturally, the food trolley service could not operate nor could tickets be checked as no one could move up and down the train. Meanwhile, I was subjected to a torrent of crudely swearing male students in the seats behind me whilst the heating system blew cold instead of warm air over us. One of the little known laws of physics is that whenever I board public transport, there is a howling infant, whose howls increase with intensity, within a couple of metres of me. The train finished up about 40 minutes late and even took about 25 minutes to do the 5-8 miles from Birmingham International to Birmingham New Street (BNS) and I missed my planned connection by several minutes. But then my luck changed and there was a train scheduled for Bromsgrove in only 8 minutes time. When I alighted at Bromsgrove, there was only myself and one other passenger whom the train conveyed to the end of the line and I was relieved to get home. I exchanged texts with my Droitwich friend and we exchanged news our experiences (generally bad) throughout the day and so we commiserated with each other. But at the end of the day, I was delighted to make contact with my former colleagues again – although I had seen some of them at Meg’s funeral, the others I had not seen for several years and we vowed to meet again as soon as we good, probably in the late Spring.

The latest volte-face  in the shape of the forthcoming budget is being labelled by all of the Opposition parties as a complete government shambles. The Treasury is leaking information that suggests that the black hole in the government finances may be nearer to £20bn rather than the predicted £40bn but one always suspects some sleight of hand afoot here. Many of the newly elected Labour MPs may be relieved that a manifesto pledge is not being broken but no doubt there are a lot of other ways, principally through stealth taxes, for money to be raised. So the whole of the British political system is rather a febrile state at the moment as the government appeared to be signalling an imminent rise in income tax only for this to be abandoned at almost the last moment. We are shortly to be exposed to a huge shake up of our immigration system where it may be that we are going to follow the fairly draconian policies adopted by the Danish government. But cultural borrowing from another society may be difficult and there will be opposition to draconian immigration laws that may well fall foul of Human Rights legislation as well as opposition from the House of Lords. But the whole debate here is being promulgated by the Reform party (with a deal of popular support) whilst the Tory and Labour parties scramble to keep up.

We seem to have daily reports of things going wrong in the provision of our public services, the latest examples being the bad mistake made by the BBC in its edition of a Panorama programme detailing the track record of Donald Trump, to the failure in our prisons service and just a day ago abuse in a residential home for young offenders. However, I learnt that in the case of the Panorama programme, the editing error actually occurred in a small company to which the making of the documentary about Trump had been outsourced and the Panorama chiefs themselves were unaware of the edit mistake. But this got me thinking about some of the wider issues involved and it has occurred to me that when errors do occur they are often (but not always) in the outsourced part of the service which had been insufficiently regulated. I wish to revisit the intellectual climate of the early 1990’s in this country where all governments were faced with a growing demand and call for services in all areas of our lives and government itself was finding it difficult, if not impossible, to be the provider of such services. The intellectual climate of the day was dominated by very much by what was called the ‘New Public Management’. New Public Management (NPM) is a managerial approach that uses private sector business techniques to improve the efficiency and accountability of public service organisations. Key features include performance measurement, competition, market mechanisms like contracting out, and treating citizens as customers. Critics argue that NPM can compromise public ethics and accountability, and erode public servants’ sense of duty, though it has also led to some innovations. One particular book captured the spirit of this new approach and it was Osborne and Gaebler: Reinventing Government published in 1992. The whole thesis of this book can be summed up in 4 words which is that the role of government in its provisions of services to the citizenry should be ‘steering rather than rowing’ this approach indicated that governments should not provide services themselves but outsource much of the day-to-operations of services to the companies in the private sector whilst the role of government was to commission and then to monitor companies or other agencies to be the actual provider of the services. I very much witnessed this in the care provided for Meg in the final year or so of her life when, in theory, the county council social services department was responsible for providing care for Meg but in practice the actual care service was provided by a private agency. Social services paid for the service but if there were shortcomings in the service (e.g. a worker phoning in sick at a few minutes notice so that I myself was often called in to physically assist the one care worker who actually turned up to care for Meg even through handling was a ‘two person’ job) then social services would not necessarily be aware of shortcomings in the service, unless they were extreme. So the wider point here is that government in both its national and local departments should spend a lot of its time in effort in commissioning and regulating but not actually providing. But the absence of sufficient resources which has led to the outsourcing in the first place has often led to a lack of regulation because government cannot regulate everything that is done in its name – if the regulation were to become too onerous and comprehensive, then the costs associated with this would be greater than the ‘savings’ associated with the outsourcing and the government should provide these services more directly. We find an extremely good example of this in the Probation service which was effectively outsourced a few years ago but the private sector agency made such a poor job of it all that the government was forced to bring it back ‘in house’ and to make the probation service a sort of extension to the prison service.

In the morning, I went along to my Tai Chi class and I found it quite enervating. But towards the end of the session my knees and hips are starting to complain a little but nothing that is unbearable. As soon as our class is over, I get together with mu ex-Bank manager friend and we always have a good wander down memory lane. Today, for example, we were having reminiscences about some of the films seen in our youth such as Cliff Richards: ‘Summer Holiday’ and a film called ‘A Summer Place’ Actually, the theme tune from this is still played with some regularity on ClassicFM radio station and the web tells me that the theme tune won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1961, the film being made in 1959. I think I saw it three times altogether although a modern audience would no doubt regard it as Americanised over-sentimentalised mush. But for the theme music to survive and still be played some 65 years later tells us something about the memorability of the tune. After our coffee, I hit the road to do my normal weekend shopping which was at Aldi which is reasonably quiet at this time in the morning. I bought a few extra things for our weekend meals and finally called in in to collect my daily newspaper and a TV programme guide I have started to buy on a weekly basis. Later in the afternoon, I received a text from my University of Winchester friend whose wife has now been admitted to a hospital with a lung infection where she will be treated with antibiotics and a whiff of oxygen. I am naturally more than a little upset and concerned on my friend’s behalf but I have despatched a text to offer whatever support and comfort I can muster over such a distance.

The Trump/Epstein affair is unfolding inch by inch – of course, if a’smoking gun’ is found, this could cause the end of the Trump presidency, Despite resisting a vote on the Epstein files for some time, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has defended his approach as being in favour of maximum transparency. The speaker, who is in charge of tabling votes in the lower chamber, said he was really opposed to the ‘reckless disregard’ for victims in the Democrats’ approach. A vote has now been forced via a discharge petition by House Democrats, which bypasses Johnson’s authority. He said ‘more is to come’ on Epstein, with the vote set for next week on releasing all unclassified files.

The day today turned out to be an unpredicted and unpredictable type of day. Sometimes, I go off down to the Methodist Centre but this morning, I changed my mind and after filling up the car with petrol and then collecting my newspaper, I thought there were some tidying up jobs that badly needed my attention so I decided to stay at home for most of the morning. I had some financial record keeping that I needed to keep up to date and then newspapers to review for useful articles before they get jettisoned and thrown out ready for collection first thing in the morning. It was a very dark day and raining cats and dogs as a huge band of rain was making its way slowly up through the Midlands. So it was a thoroughly depressing day and there was not much happening to lighten the mod of the moment. I received some fairly long texts from my University of Winchester friend who was explaining to me how first his daughter, and then himself and finally his exceptionally sick wife had succumbed to a new and very potent flu virus which is sweeping across the country and perhaps even the globe. This very nasty flu virus can co-exist with COVID and it appears that the last flu jabs may be rather ineffective in combatting it. What made things worse was that my friend who normally sees his sick wife every day was keeping away for a few days which the nursing staff had to try and explain to her – but she still caught the virus anyway. This means, apart from other things, that I shall not see my friend together with others when I travel down to Winchester on Friday.

In the late afternoon, my Droitwich friend and I texted each other as we were both feeling pretty low and needed to cheer each other up (which we did) We discussed some plans for the meal we were going to cook jointly on Saturday afternoon. As soon as she arrives, we are going to go to the very high quality butchers down the road and then come to my house to do some vegetable and other meal preparations. Then we both agreed that I should go and attend the church services which I usually do on a Saturday whilst my friend carried on preparing the meal which we can make into a leisurly affair on Saturday evening. My friend’s mother was in hospital in South Africa which we hope is just a short term problem and we are keeping our fingers crossed (although I have made the offer of some prayers as well) So we both have pretty busy days for the next couple of days which will make Saturday all the more enjoyable for the both of us. My friend and I have fairly similar patterns of pretty busy mornings but in the late afternoon, we are often left by ourselves which is why we seize the opportunities whilst we can to cook together and generally enjoy each other’s company.

Turning to the fascinations of US Politics, it appears that the Democrats have made a sort of concession which has allowed the Houses of Congress to reconvene and for the shut-down of the governmental machine to end. But the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have just released three emails linking Trump very closely with the Epstein affair. Members of the Oversight Committee have published three emails this morning, out of thousands the committee says it is reviewing from the Epstein Estate. One email alleges that Donald Trump spent hours with a victim.(We now know from a section, once redacted and now unredacted, that the victim was none other than Virginia Giuffre) In another, Epstein writes of Trump ‘Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine [sic] to stop’, according to the release by the Democrats. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and has previously called the allegations against him a hoax. We are still waiting to hear Trump’s response to the emails. Now what we have here is not exactly a smoking gun but the emails and particularly one of them is potentially very damaging to Trump. It indicates that Trump had spent hours in the company of Virginia Giuffre and several other young girls. We must conclude that Trump in the company of all of these young women (Giuffre being under-age) was not in Epstein’s house to play a simple card game of ‘Happy Families’ Now the emails do not point to directly to any inappropriate behaviour on the part of Donald Trump but Trump’s past associations with multiple young women leads to suspicions (and one must say that that is all) of inappropriate behaviour. Even if the Democrats, now their latest member is capable of being sworn in and are in a position to vote that the FBI release the whole of thousands of files which mention Trump by name, may get their way in the House of Representatives but the Trump dominated Senate (= Upper House) will probably still protect Trump by not agreeing to the release of the Epstein files. All we can say is that we are further along the road to full disclosure of the Epstein files in their entirety but not yet at the end of the journey.

The downfall of the Director General of the BBC may have to be viewed in a different light as we now learn about the part played by Sir Robbie Gibb, 61, who has a long history with the BBC, having been BBC News’ head of BBC Westminster and editor of live political programmes, as well as deputy editor of BBC Two’s Newsnight. He left BBC News in 2017 to become then prime minister Theresa May’s director of communications, a post he held until 2019.He was appointed to the BBC board in 2021 by Boris Johnson. In his role as non-executive director, he is responsible for ‘upholding and protecting the independence of the BBC by acting in the public interest and exercising independent judgement’, according to the BBC’s website. But as someone with incredibly close links with the Tories, he appears to have played a critical role in bringing the maladroit Panamera edit into the light of the day. This is quite ironic as it is often in the play script of the right wing enemies of the BBC that the BBC is in the hands of ‘lefties’ but the reverse appears to be the case.

The interesting news overnight which has hit the headlines of practically each one of our national daily newspapers is that Trump is to sue the BBC for $1 billion as recompense for the Panorama item which claims that he had incited the rebellion against the Capitol Building on 6 January, 2021. We know that Trump is a litigious individual and has fired off law suits against most of the liberal media on countless occasions. These law suits either end in failure or a settlement but the amount of the settlement is rarely, if ever, disclosed. Three questions (apart from many others) occur to us this morning. The first of these is whether such suing could be in a British or an American court because a British court would probably throw it out within seconds. A second question is whether Trump would have to prove any ‘reputational damage’ because his track record of downright lies is legendary. Certainly a British court would surely take the view that Trumps record of mendacity implies that he does not have a reputation for truth or honesty which is capable of losing. But a third and intriguing possibility is that if a writ emerges, then a counter claim could immediately be issued as Trump called the BBC ‘corrupt’ which is a huge claim and, as well as being factually incorrect would be a claim impossible to sustain. No doubt a grovelling apology of sorts will be issued and the threat of court action against the BBC will be quietly forgotten. Meanwhile, the BBC has problems of its own because a new Director General of the BBC has to be found  and then installed whist a campaign has to be started to restore the BBC’s claim for honesty and probity in reporting. Certainly, the role of the Daily Telegraph in bringing this whole affair into the light has to be questioned because that newspaper and other right wing elements are always seeking an opportunity to attack the BBC and, of course, this particular lapse of editorial standards has given them a gift-wrapped early Christmas present. Returning to domestic issues, my Droitwich friend is sufficiently recovered to return to her own house (although still in quite a lot of pain) but normal life (ie work! family!) has to be resumed. Our domestic help turned up in the morning and so the three of us had some jolly conversations and established some connections in common.  It is true to say that my kitchen is looking a tad less cluttered now that I have had some friendly helpers who have encouraged me to put things away where they live in cupboards and to have some rationalisation of things that used to reside along the top of my kitchen work surfaces. One I have things all neat and tidy, I have plenty of incentive to keep things that way.  I am still privately delighted about the way in which I got my study reorganised in such a way that I can immediately file away a document or put my hand on anything that I know is stored in the filing system somewhere.

In the morning, my friend and I had a fairly lazy time and we chatted quite a lot with our domestic help as well. Then I went off to a local supermarket both to pick up some supplies but also taking the opportunity to access the ATM and to pick up my copy of a newspaper. When I returned home, my friend and  decided to cook some lunch together and we treated ourselves to some rather fine sausages  which we complemented with some home-made mashed potato and some petit pois. Then we started to make arrangements for the transport of my friend back home. What I thought was going to be quite a dull November just to be ‘endured’ as it were is getting filled up with social engagements, not least the trip down to Winchester this Friday. Although I saw some of my erstwhile colleagues o the occasion of Meg’s funeral, there are several I have not seen for some 2-3 years so I am looking forward to seeing them again after all of this time. There is quite a lot of talk about the impact that the budget will have when it is delivered in a couple of week’s time. In past times, the leak of a budget secret was judged to be the most heinous of political crimes but today even governments leak some of their plans in advance. It seems almost certain that income tax will rise by about 2p in the pound and this is judged to be the easiest and the quickest way to raise a lot of money pretty quickly.  The government may attempt to soften the blow by reducing National Insurance contributions by the same amount. But this probably having the effect of increasing tax on the retired (as they do not pay National Insurance contributions) and the wealthier portion of taxpayers. A few ‘back of an envelope’ calculations indicates to me that what I shall gain on the roundabouts I may lose on the swings  as the planned ‘cost of living’ increases for next April will probably be cancelled out by the rise in income tax.

Now that it has been six months since I lost Meg to dementia, I have come to appreciate the importance of social relationships. When you are in the middle of the ‘work’ phase of one’s life, then the majority of one’s life space is concerned with the actual process of work, having a family life and all of the domestic jobs of running a home and social life just get fitted in ‘around the edges’ as it were. Whilst I was caring for Meg and particularly in the last year of her life, I had carers calling in four times a day and a host of nurses, medics, occupational therapists, church visitors and so on so I was never short of bodies around, so to speak. But now I am in a very different ‘life space’ if I can put it that way, and maintaining a variety of social contacts has become a central life interest for me. Some of my circle of friends and acquaintances is diminishing (as when people sell up to be nearer to their family which I well understand) but if I did nothing but chug along then my social circle would gradually shrink and this is not a good thing. So I am trying hard to maintain a good social life and to see and maintain my friendships whenever I can, as well as seizing any opportunities of expanding my social circle.

The really shock news that shook the UK yesterday was the news of the enforced resignation of the Director General of the BBC, Tim Davie. The BBC Director General and CEO of News, Deborah Turness, resigned on Sunday night, after criticism that Panorama misled viewers in editing a speech by Donald Trump. The Telegraph published a leaked BBC memo suggesting the programme pushed two parts of Trump’s speech together, so he appeared explicitly to encourage the Capitol Hill riots of January 2021. The two sentences attributed to him were actually spoken by Trump but were an hour apart in time but made to appear as though one sentence immediately followed the other. This made it appear that Trump had specifically endorsed the riotous attack on the White House following Trump’s loss of the election in January 6th, 2021. This was undoubtedly an evident, not to say stupid, edit of Trump’s words although not untrue to fact as Trump has actually uttered the two sentences, albeit about an hour apart. Having been alerted, the White House immediately claimed that the BBC was the purveyor of ‘fake news’ and have then reacted with undisguised glee at the ousting of the BBC Director General. What is so galling abut this whole affair is that the BBC have made one very bad error of editorial judgement but have generally striven very hard to be impartial and to be fair. But the White House has regularly been responsible for a mountain of truths, half truths  and exaggerations over the Trump years within being subject to any real criticism from any of the Main Street Media, including of course, the BBC.  To add to this editorial lapse of judgement, there have been other slips of judgement over, for example, the reporting of the war in Gaza where the BBC has been accused of bias. One of the accusations is that the BBC’s Arabic service was guilty of bias in its reporting of the war in Gaza but even if this was partly true, it is hardly surprising  given the listenership to the BBC’s Arabic service which must exclude 99.9% of the UK population.  Although the right wing press in the UK had not been restrained in following Donald Trump in criticising the BBC, the counter reaction has been led by the Liberal Democrats. Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, who has said we must stand up for a free press and free speech, responding to news that the BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness have resigned. ‘The BBC is not perfect, but it remains one of the few institutions standing between our British values and a populist, Trump-style takeover of our politics. The resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness must be an opportunity for the BBC to turn a new leaf, rebuild trust and not give in to the likes of Nigel Farage who want to destroy it. As a public service broadcaster, the BBC’s role is vital in ensuring our democracy is based on facts, scrutiny, and accountability. We must stand up for a free press, free speech, and a strong, independent BBC, to stop Trump’s America becoming Farage’s Britain.’ So this row will rumble on for days and, in the meantime, Donald Trump and the White House have become even more emboldened as they gleefully disseminate the fact that the BBBC as well as much of the remainder of the liberal press in the western world is the purveyor of ‘fake news’ But one has to ask the question that what on earth possess the BBC producers not to recognise that their maladroit editing of Trump’s speeches would be quickly spotted and be subjected to immediate criticism. But at the end of the day, Trump did actually utter the two sentences attributed to him and surely a BBC editor could have inserted a comment to indicate that one sentence was not immediately uttered after the other. An esteemed commentator, Nick Robinson, a presenter of the Today programme and the Political Thinking podcast, shared several posts about the resignations on X. ‘It is clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation… Both things are happening at the same time.’ Meanwhile, Trump has been busy issuing pardons to anybody concerned with the attack on the Capitol building, thus reinforcing the narrative that he is trying to convey that he was essentially robbed of the Presidential election by massive voter fraud. But no independent analyst has managed to come up with the slightest proof that the presidential 2020 election was won fraudulently and Trump lost the popular vote by 4.5% But we are witnessing here one of the biggest ‘rewriting of history’ episodes to be taking place in modern times and one which the Democrats may well be incapable of overturning in the future.

This morning has been the morning of the last day to complete my friend’s recovery process before she returns to her own home tomorrow. We spent the morning both simultaneously cooking and helping to tidy up and reorganise the contents my kitchen. I have to admit that with looking Meg for so long the kitchen was just a place into which I had to dash and cook a meal in the shortest possible time and it is fair comment that to say that some of the contents of my store cupboards had become a little haphazard over time and some food items, particularly on the spice rack,  had become out of date and needed some pruning. So, my friend was simultaneously cooking me an excellent Asian meal whilst reorganising the kitchen whilst I watched from the sidelines. But I did pop down into town to get some fresh ingredients to enhance our meal and then we had a really satisfying meal together in the middle of the day, followed by the kind of siesta that we would enjoy if we were on a Spanish, rather than an English timetable. Later on in the day no doubt we will watch a little bit of TV together and then my friend will have completed the few days since her operation, recovering pretty well before we both return our more normal existences together tomorrow. Tonight, I am looking forward to having a conversation with a friend with whom I am re-establishing contact after a period of some years.