After the pleasant visit of my son the day before yesterday, I did some household jobs and settled down to watch the latest transmission of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ which I must say I rather enjoyed. I was unsure whether the actress chosen to play Emma really fitted the part but all of the other characters were much as I had pictured them from the days when I was first exposed to this novel which was part of my GCSE ‘O’-level curriculum. Two parts of I suspect a four part series were shown with the remainder following next week. This was followed by a biography and discussion of the life of Shakespeare who actually lived in the most violent and turbulent of times in mediaeval London before he moved to back to Stratford. Shakespeare great rival, Kit Marlowe was killed in what might have been a street brawl or may have even been an assassination. Again, more of this follows next weekend as well. Meanwhile, the countdown to the US mid-term elections is continuing apace and MAGA looks as though things are disintegrating fast for the Republicans as there is only just a fortnight now until polling day itself on Tuesday, 3rd November. In the last few days, Trump had sacked his press secretary after five days, the female ambassador to Greece after a massive financial scandal and another obscure functionary in charge of ‘culture wars’ By now it is almost a cast-iron certainty that he House of Democrats will be lost to the Democrats and I have seen one statistical forecast that puts the probability of taking the Senate at 69%. This sounds very optimistic to me and I suspect that the Senate is much more of a 50:50 knife-edge. In these elections, the whole of the House of Representatives (equivalent to the House of Commons) is up for re-election bet only third of the Senate (equivalent to the House of Lords) where each Senator is elected for six years and elections are held for a third of the Senate every two years. Donald Trump has recently been campaigning in seats which are normally considered as rock solid Republican which might be a sign of the desperation of the Republicans. Also, when Trump pushes himself forward in support of a candidate, their support deems to fall leaving the intriguing possibility that Trump is becoming a liability in each Senate race in which he participates. Meanwhile, over in Europe some of us are watching in a kind of fascinated horror, the way in which France seems to be tearing itself apart, politically. Nationwide protests over the high cost of living rocked France on Saturday, adding to turmoil over public spending and debt ahead of a critical vote in the National Assembly. Rioting broke out in some cities as luxury boutiques and supermarkets were looted while public buildings were defaced and even set on fire. That followed mass demonstrations earlier this month, with students decrying run-down classrooms, missing teachers, and buildings that aren’t equipped for rising temperatures. Protestors blamed years of underinvestment in public education. At the same time, France’s looming debt has sent bond yields to the highest levels in 24 years, flashing warning signs not seen since the eurozone debt crisis in 2011. With far-right and far-left candidates in the lead to become France’s next president in the spring, markets are losing confidence that either side will take the painful steps necessary to rein in the deficit.
In the afternoon, I had to choose my moment in order to get the front grassed area cut and although the sun was out when I started, it soon clouded over. However, I managed to get the customary double cut performed (one in each direction) before the threatened shower started. By my reckoning, this is the second last cut of the season but I doubt that my success with the weather will be repeated tomorrow when I tackle the back lawn. But this only takes half the time of the front grassed area but the weather forecast is a 100% certainty of rain and none of wish to cut the grass when it is exceedingly wet. After lunch and before started the mowing, I saw a campaign speech by a young Democratic senator by the name of Jon Ossoff. His rhetoric and attack upon the Trump family corruption was impressive in the extreme and his rise to fame is said to be meteoric. However, he has denied three times in the last week that he intends to throw his hat into the ring for the 2028 presidential election but I suspect he could be prevailed upon nearer the time. Although President Trump won the state narrowly in the last presidential election, Ossoff won the race for the Senate by some 2%. But his lead over the Republican challenger in the mid-terms is said to be anything between 6%-10% and in the debate between the two candidates which I witnessed the younger man wiped the floor with his Republican rival. My initial TV viewing this evening is a little frustrating because there is a programme on operatic favourites that starts at 10.00pm followed at 12.00 by a programme on ‘Mozart’s Women’ But the programmes are to be shown on Sky Arts for which there is no facility for catch-up unless, of course, one takes out a subscription. I have no U3A meetings scheduled for this week but at the end of the week, I will probably meet up with my new found church friends for a coffee and a chat in Spanish and at the weekend, I am entertaining Meg’s cousins to a family meal. The protests in France seem to be part of a wider movement of protest because similar expressions of dissatisfaction have also occurred in Albania, Portugal and Italy. Predictably, the police react in a rather heavy-handed fashion deploying water cannon and tear gas fairly indiscriminately. A rather shocking consequence is that the 140 year old town hall in Limoges, France has been burnt down. It must be said that it is a part of French political culture for the young to revolt sporadically, the most famous occasion between the 1968 student riots in Paris, which events were happening just as I was taking my final exams at university. In fact, it was the French Communist party who put an end to the juvenile rebellions and ensured that the workers returned to their factories. In the UK, there were a certain number of occupations of universities in sympathy with the French and one worker at the LSE had a heart attack and died when confronting the rebellious students. But French students can teach British students a thing or two when it comes to protest and rebellions.