The night before last was cooler and I, for one, managed to get to sleep practically as soon as my head had touched the pillow so the intensely hot spell is thankfully coming to an end. The hot weather zone sitting over most of the country is moving away eastwards and will be replaced by somewhat cooler and fresher weather blowing in from the Atlantic. I valued the walk in the park which I undertook with my American friend and in the park, there was a magnificent and somewhat cooler breeze blowing which we both appreciated. We shared the experiences of the day with each other and chatted with a solitary dog walker who was explaining to us her pleasant experience of cruises she had undertaken since she had lost her partner some years before. After I returned home, I had a light repast of some melon and watched ‘Question Time’ which had been displaced from its usual time slot, perhaps because of the football. I watched the football a little and the became absorbed into what turned out to be quite a long documentary on the life and work of Mozart which the YouTube algorithm had thrown in my direction. In the morning upon scanning the international news, I learned that Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 100% import tariff on the UK over its digital services tax on American social media firms. The US president also said it would supersede Britain’s existing trade deal. Mr Trump had previously raised the spectre of such a move unless Britain dropped the 2% levy on the revenues of several major US tech companies. The tax targets companies whose worldwide revenues from digital activities exceed £500m, with more than £25m of the revenue from UK users. So all of this means is that the UK is in hock to the large American corporations such as Amazon, Google and the rest and we cannot get them to pay the appropriate amount of tax to which we as a nation are entitled. The large American corporations have the ability to ‘shift’ their profits from one country to another so that they can take advantage of the lower tax rates available in some countries. If there is a solution to this problem, it probably lies at the European level in which all countries can shelter underneath the shelter of a joint European tax policy but, of course, such an approach is closed off to us since we left the EU and countries like the UK can be picked off one by one. Any British government, including the present Labour administration, can point to financial turbulence which arose far distant from our shores (the original financial crisis, then the COVID pandemic, then the war in Ukraine only to be followed by the present Iranian conflict and all overlaid by the 6%-8% reduction in our GDP following Brexit) and one can see that the room for manoeuvre by any British government is limited in the extreme. How much of this has percolated into the minds of the great British public , I could not say but it is the present generation of politicians who have to shoulder all of the blame. Part of the problem is that blaming the international order looks to the British public like whinging and a refusal to accept responsibility, but I would not like to be a minister in ay British government at the moment. Europe as a whole is suffering from problems of an ageing population, declining birth rates and immigration flows the benefits of which may be uncertain and certainly not immediate.
The morning turned out to be quite a full one. On my way down into town, I noticed my Irish friend doing some outside gardening work so I swung the car around onto the service road outside his house so that I could have a brief chat with him.I knew that today was the day in which Bromsgrove (public) school was to have an annual service for its leavers and I realise from past observations of this event, it is also an occasion for mothers, sisters and girlfriends to get dressed up in their most fashionable clothing and to demonstrate this to the world at large. I had received an invitation to tbs event via a distant friend but decided (wisely as it turned out) not to attend the church service. There was massive competition to get into the nearest carpark to the church which was the local authority car park adjacent to Waitrose and cars were queuing about six deep patiently waiting for a space to appear. Perhaps it was not surprising that on three occasions when I was patiently waiting for a space to appear a big and expensive car zoomed ahead of me and occupied the space for which I was evidently waiting. I picked up my newspaper from Waitrose and bought some coffee after which I availed myself of the ‘free’ coffee made available to Waitrose cardholders. The elderly coffee-drinking lady sitting next to me indicated that she had kept cool during the past week by hunting out the shops with the most efficient air conditioning and effectively staying in them for most of the day. Then I journeyed to Asda and bought some of those items unavailable in my local supermarket such as bicarbonate of soda (which I bought to mix with vinegar and some washing up liquid to make a home-made remedy to alleviate the effects of black spot stains on my patio, occasioned by moss tumbling off the roof during the night) I bought some extra fruit and salad and then made for home but had an extraordinary motoring incident on the way home. As I proceeding along quite busy and well-used road which runs along the back of the local parish church, I was confronted by the most enormous tractor and combine-harvester. This vehicle literally took up the whole of the road space and I had to reverse about 150 yards, with this great monster bearing down on me as I ‘retreated’ . When and if this monstrosity hit even more major roads, it would probably cause some traffic chaos but he was going to have his way as I retreated. Naturally, I was not a happy bunny about all of this as you can imagine. Upon my return home, I cooked myself some chicken pieces which I heated in a jar of pasta tomato sauce and a smidgeon of some pre-cooked rice.