The evening before last, I went for a walk with my American friend in the park not meeting until 7.15 to watch the end of the football. At this stage of the day, there are some wonderful refreshing breezes in the park and it makes for a very relaxing end to the day. Although on the notice board it states that the closing time is 8.00pm in the summer, we both left at 8.15 and there seemed to be a fair number of both cars and people around so how the actual closing time operates is a bit of a mystery. The World Cup is getting to the exciting closing stages at the moment. I was watching the Argentina vs. Egypt and about ten minutes before the end of the match, Eygpt seemed to be point of eliminating Argentina, the world champions. But then Argentina pulled off one the most astonishing come-backs of all time by scoring three goals in eleven minutes and it looked as though Messi, who had not had a particularly good game, saved his best until the last. Egypt felt they had been unfairly robbed of a goal as a VAR review in the build up to the goal showed a foul but whether this had any real impact upon the scoring of the goal will be argued about for a long, long time. VAR is proving very useful for some decisions but is creating other problems in its strict interpretation. So we are left in a situation wit six European teams, plus Argentina and Morocco left in the quarter finals. I would be amazed if England gets past Norway as they may be called upon to repeat their heroics of their win against Mexico recently. Turning away from football, the domestic political scene is producing dramas of its own. Nigel Farage has announced his intention to resign as an MP and to fight a by-election to attempt to regain some political credibility. But all of the major political parties are refusing to participate in this ‘game’. The fallout from Nigel Farage’s decision to call a by-election in his seat continues. The decision from the Reform UK leader is being described by some as a farce, as all the major parties are refusing to stand a candidate against him in Clacton. Labour has branded the vote a circus, the Tories said it was fake, the Lib Dems deemed it a stunt, and the Greens called it desperate. Farage has offered to pay for the election, but the suggestion has been rejected as unworkable. Due to archaic procedures in parliament, it is technically impossible for an MP to resign their role unless they are given permission by the Treasury. So far it is not clear whether this has been granted to Farage, or even if he has formally applied. So we are very much in uncharted territory as it appears that if the by-election does go ahead, Farage will secure his victory only against joke candidates and his credibility will be damaged and not enhanced. At this point of time, Farage as not actually relinquished his seat and therefore Parliamentary enquiries into his past funding will continue. Parliament will go into a summer recess shortly and we are entering what in politics is sometimes called the ‘silly season’ so we shall able to wait and see how these antics unfold in the coming days. One thing that emerged, to the amusement and much merriment of the media circus, as that Nigel Farage is liable to have at least one challenger in the by-election which he has triggered by resigning, hoping to evade parliamentary scrutiny of his finances. It is a feature of by- elections in the UK that often joke candidates enter the contest because they know that they will be afforded a certain amount of publicity in the interests of fairness. One such candidate goes by the name of ‘Count Binface’ and he dresses up as a black waste disposal bin. So, it looks as though Nigel Farage may spend the summer campaigning against a black dustbin and, it is not inconceivable that disgruntled Labour, Liberal and Green inclined voters might lend him their votes in order to defeat Farage. If this were to happen (unlikely, but not impossible)then Farage would lose all credibility and his political career would effectively be over. Mr Farage looks almost certain to win. But if another candidate, such as Count Binface, does surprisingly well in the absence of the main parties it could be another blow to the Reform leader. There were already reports of donations being offered for the Binface campaign. Polling expert and Tory peer Lord Hayward told a newspaper ‘It could be a triple embarrassment. First the major parties not standing. Second and most crucially the turnout because Farage has to show that a large number of Clacton voters still support him. And third how well candidates like Count Binface actually do’
The day has been a quiet day only punctuated by weekly shopping in the middle of the day. But the afternoon has been incredibly hot and I just ventured out to pull out some really tall weeds ready for disposal in the brown-lidded bin tomorrow morning. Then I devoted some of the afternoon by going through some past copies of ‘The Times’ to extract useful clippings before the newspapers get collected tomorrow morning. There are some reports from a NATO summit held in Ankara that Donald Trump’s hold on reality may be slipping quite badly in public. At one point, in a rambling and meandering speech he appeared to confuse the Ukrainian president with Vladimir Putin and on another occasion referred to the Islamic Republic of Japan (rather than Iran) These verbal gaffes are becoming more frequent and those close to him must be aware this mental powers are diminishing. He has even threatened to take over Greenland again (a sovereign territory, administered by Denmark and part of NATO) but may even have forgotten in the afternoon that he said this in the morning. We have no football to divert us this evening and so await the start of the quarter finals over the forthcoming weekend. France is almost certain to be one of the finalists but the other could be one of Spain, England, Norway or Belgium. I would put my money on a France v. Spain final but football matches can sometimes be decided by the cruellest twist of fate or even a disputed VAR decision. This weekend is going to be the town fête and I think my American friend and I will discuss some strategies for keeping well out of the way of the crowds if that is possible. Certainly, the children will enjoy it on their floats but the traffic flows throughout the town are severely disrupted as roads are closed off and the normal rhythms of life disrupted.