The breaking news yesterday morning was the announcement that Harry and Meghan were due to come back to live ‘somewhere outside London’ by September when their two children could be enrolled in a local school. Details of where they are to live and the security arrangements that need to be put in place are a closely guarded secret and one wonders if a kind of concordat as been reached with the national press against whom Harry recently lost his court case. There has been a lot going behind the scenes, here, and the full details may take some years to emerge but some of the groundwork may well have been laid when Harry and Meghan visited the king recently. I would not be surprised if the King and the Palace had been involved in some private negotiations and it is certainly the case that Harry has had a long standing interest in the fate of veterans and those injured in military conflict and his efforts n this direction are surely to be applauded. I write not as an inveterate loyalist but it could be that Harry is able to carve a very useful role for himself in connection with a host of military charities and there are, of course, the ‘Invictus Games’. The next Invictus Games will take place in Birmingham from July 10 to July 17, 2027. Events will be held at major venues including the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) and the Sandwell Aquatics Centre so I am sure there is plenty of preparatory work into which Harry can throw himself were he to be so inclined. I find it interesting that the pull of the ‘old’ country still has its attractions and the various US commercial ventures have not set the world alight. As one commentator acidly notes after their latest movie flop ‘There is no getting around the optics of finishing five places behind a 70-minute compilation of internet cat videos. Hollywood can forgive a lot, but being beaten by CatVideoFest is the sort of indignity they can do without’. The day’s weather will bring some intermittent sunshine that we can expect some rain from mid-day onwards and the possibility of some thunder storms in the afternoon, which is something for which we all have been longing. Meanwhile in the political agenda, the Liberals have been announcing new policies to deal with the ‘small boats’ crisis. Davey blames Brexit for small boats crossings – and says UK should join EU asylum system. The leader of the Liberal Democrats has blamed Brexit for the small boats crisis, and is calling on the government to join the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum to tackle the issue. Sir Ed Davey said joining the pact would allow the UK legally to return migrants to the first EU country they entered and grant Britain access to the EU’s biometric database. The party argues that Brexit has made it harder to carry out checks, as the Home Office no longer has access to EU-wide databases with background information, criminal history, and data on whose asylum applications have been denied elsewhere. It also says being outside the EU has been described as ‘a major pull factor’ There have been times in the past when the Liberals have made innovative suggestions and after initially being decried by other political parties, they have been quietly adopted. But it must be said that the Labour party is making some headway in this contentious area and public attention has been diverted away from the actual number of arrivals and towards where they shall actually be housed (as activism against them can almost be guaranteed in whatever part of the UK they are located) I wonder whether an ultimate solution might be a combination of ex-military camps to house the people allied with a system of government-run workshops with a degree of guaranteed employment (a bit like the government sponsored scheme of ‘Remploy’ for disabled workers that was abandoned years ago) whch might provide a model for a sensible solution to the problem.
As I was to be attending a funeral of a much loved parishioner, I donned the black suit I last wore on the occasion of Meg’s funeral about thirteen months ago. I concluded that with the passage of time, the waist band had grown a tad tighter and the trouser legs appeared a little longer than I remember so I suppose that at some stage alterations might be called for. The church car park was unfortunately half filled with the vehicles of scaffolding firms as the church roof is to receive some much needed attention but I parked in a convenient location on the roadside as did most of the congregation. The funeral was very well attended and the church was probably three quarters full with an interesting eulogy by one of the deceased closest friends and an appropriate source of hymns. The funeral service invited anyone who wished to attend a large Conservative and Unionist club on the Kidderminster Road. I must have walked past this establishment hundreds of times but never had occasion to enter inside but today I was one of the first to arrive. We were directed to a large marquee which is evidently used for functions of this type and after a suitable period of time, we all tucked in to a selection of finger food including sandwiches, samosas, quiche slices and the like. So this was all very welcome and there must have been copious supplies as once we had eaten our fill, the trays of food were circulated around so we could all have one last bite ad evidently they wanted all of the provisions to be consumed. In the midst of all of this, we evidently experienced a much needed shower of rain which fortunately was over by the time we came to leave. I spent a lot of the time with the church organist and her husband who I know quite well and we exchanged reminiscences about our early musical experiences. An interesting analysis has just been released indicating the life-time earnings associated with various degree courses. A degree worth almost £30,000 over three years would pay for itself – though not in all cases. The highest life-time earnings are expected to come from medicine, which can bring £400,000 more for women and nearly £500,000 more for men, and economics (over £300,000 more for women and over £650,000 more for men). Nursing is another surprisingly lucrative subject, with women studying nursing being expected to earn £200,000 more. The average student in programmes such as philosophy will likely be worse off than if they hadn’t gone to university, however, with performing arts students expected to make some £43,000 less. Overall, a quarter of students are expected to be worse off because they went to university.