The evening before yesterday, I did my usual turn around the park but was unaccompanied because my normal walking companion, my American friend was feeling a little wearied after a couple of hours swimming earlier in the day. Being on my own, I decided to measure the distance of a circuit around the artificial lake in the park. I know that a double stride of mine is 5’6″ or 1.67 metres and each circuit of the lake was 500 steps and I did two complete revolutions last night. So this made 1000 steps at 1.67 metres for each step so evidently, I had walked 1670 metres which is 1826 yards and therefore exceeds a mile (= 1760 yards) Actually I was pretty tired when I got home and did not sleep particularly well when I did get to bed later in the evening so perhaps, I had overdone it all a little. In the day, the rail network had suffered a catastrophic power failure leading to delays in traffic across much of the North and the Midlands. Although there was a back up system this took some time to kick in and in the meanwhile schedules were disrupted across a lot of the country. All of this points to a lack of investment in critical infrastructure and just adds to the national malaise that the whole country is suffering a long slow decline after years of adverse events (financial cris, period of austerity, COVID, the recent oil crisis following wars in Ukraine and in Iran). I learn this morning that most teenagers will simply ignore any newly introduced guidelines into the use of social media. Most teens will opt out of government’s planned social media curfew, new polling suggests Most teenagers intend to opt out of the government’s planned social media curfews, according to new polling. Former PM Sir Keir Starmer unveiled plans for a voluntary curfew for 16- and 17-year-olds in his final weeks in office, which would prevent teenagers from accessing social media sites between midnight and 6am by default but could be turned off. The poll by Censuswide found 84.6% of 16-18-year-olds said they would opt out of the proposed curfews. The poll, conducted on behalf of the Online Responsibility Network, found 45.2% of teenagers said they would turn the curfew off to allow them to speak to friends or family, while another 37.2% would turn it off to watch online content. Leanne Proctor, regulatory lead at the Online Responsibility Network, said the research suggests a curfew is ‘unlikely to be enough on its own to prevent online harms’. What seems extraordinary is that any government thinks that making use of the social media voluntary was going to curb its almost complete university on the smart phones of the young. Australia have already legislated for a ban on the use of social media by I believe the under 16s and th majority of Australian youth has found a way round this by deploying VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) the software for which is easily downloadable. So the timid government efforts to curb social media use are likely to prove ineffectual and perhaps no one should be surprised by all of this, I wonder if the government were frightened of losing the teenage vote once they have lowered the voting age but the thought that the government thought they could effect profound social change of this nature by relying upon voluntary action rather than legislation is laughable. So the big tech giants have been appeased once more and the government may have feared a massive social backlash (paradoxically on the social media) were they to have legislated.
So in the morning, my American friend and I went on to a littls day trip to Alcester, a delightful little Georgian own. We managed to park easily and after our morning coffee, we went to visit the precious Anglican church which dates back to mediaeval times but had been remodelled along Georgian lines in the eighteenth century. Then we made a way to our fabourtite hardware shop which sells all kinds of sundries and then through a selection of charity ships (for which the town is famous) until we finished up at the hotel in which we had pre-booked our lunch. We both had a beef lasagne served with salad and it was as delicious as always. We called in at a local Waitrose to purchase a joint for our m=by now customary Sunday lunch and I made enquiries after a member of staff who used to work in the Bromsgrove branch but had transferred a year or ao ago to this one. When we got home, we enjoyed a quiet ice cream in the garden for which we both felt the need as the sun was blazing hot this afternoon. I read this afternoon some good news emanating from the USA. The US appeals court has blocked Donald Trump’s $400m (£297m) White House ballroom. The federal appeals court ordered the Trump administration to stop construction of the ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. The Washington-based US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Last year the non-profit sued after the administration tore down the East Wing and began building a 90,000 sq ft (8,360-square-meter) ballroom without authorisation from Congress. Although Trump has been proclaiming this as a ballroom, in practice it was going to be a cluster of facilities including a hospital and a secure and well-guarded ‘bolt hole’ This facility was to be so well guarded that in the event that Trump lost the next election and buried himself deep within the confines of the new structure then it might not have been possible to force him to leave.. There are some cynics on the Democratic side who are convinced that this has been part of the Trump plan all along as he will argue (after the event) that he lost the election because it was improperly conducted. Of course, Donald Trump will try to appeal against this conviction by any means open to him and powers of the presidency are not insubstantial. But the destruction of the whole of the East Wing of the White House and a rather hideous and gaudy replacement for it must surely rankle with many Americans. It also demonstrates that Trump had a complete disregard for the law and any planning process when the proposed ballroom was planned and perhaps he will just completely disregard the law and carry on building his whole monstrosity regardless.