Month: October 2026

The day of the mid-term elections is now only a fortnight away and there is a news report that wherever Donald Trump goes to campaign, he can guarantee to be heckled. Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low – indicating that next month’s midterm elections could be punishing for the Republicans. A Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests that just 31% approve of the president’s performance in office, a level not seen in either of his two terms. When asked which party they would vote for if congressional elections were held today, 47% picked Democrats and 35% chose Republicans. The figures could bolster Democratic hopes of seizing control of the House of Representatives and the Senate when Americans head to the polls on 3 November. But some 10 million  Americans have already voted either by mail or by an in-person vote out of some 55 million requests for postal voting so about one fifth of the mail ballots have already been completed. There are some small indications that Democrats might be assisted by postal ballots as perhaps some older or disabled voters find it easier to vote by post and this slice of the population may be more Democrat inclined. Trump had tried to ‘fix’ the postal vote by ordering that the postal authorities check that the voters were properly registered before the ballot was cast but this attempt was thrown out by the courts. Turning to domestic matters, I always look forward to the day when our domestic help calls around because there is always a lot for us to talk about. I need to consult with her about a stunning starter that I will prepare for the meal on Sunday but we have already go the main ingredients for a good lamb stew organised. One of Meg’s cousins is a coeliac I have just learnt so I need to be particularly careful about things like gravy but as I prepare my own stock these day, this ought to be unproblematic.  This week is the week before the much anticipated budget and in years gone by, the Chancellor of the Exchequer used to have a period of absolute silence (often called ‘purdah’) to keep budget secrets save and secure and not subject  to stock market manipulation. But times have now changed and it seems that inspired budget leaks are now common place. Ahead of the UK Autumn Budget on 28 October 2026, Chancellor John Healey and Prime Minister Andy Burnham have ruled out increases to the main rates of income tax, employee National Insurance, and VAT, as well as a large-scale alignment of Capital Gains Tax (CGT) with income tax rates. However, with tight public finances, several specific areas and targeted tax changes are expected or heavily rumoured. It looks as though the banks are bracing themselves for a further increase in taxation levels which they can probably afford, despite their protestations. I am often reminded of a famous historical quote about government finance. The original saying is: ‘The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing’. This cynical but accurate maxim is widely attributed to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who served as the Minister of Finances under King Louis XIV of France from 1665 to 1683 but is just as true today. My other favourite quote on the subject of taxation was actually uttered by an American. The famous quote is that  ‘Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society’, originally stated by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in his 1927 dissenting opinion  but it sounds like something that George Bernard Shaw might have declaimed.

I knew that the day was going  to be a rainy one and consequently  got rained upon just going from the carpark to the Pilates studio. But I had taken a small, light raincoat with me and this shielded me from the worst although it had abated somewhat when my class was over. After lunch, I came home and cooked myself the normal rather delayed lunch of a prawn omelette complemented with some wild rocket  which seems to have health benefits, according to the website ‘checkyourfood.com’ which I have just discovered but which I have just bookmarked as it gives you all the information you might need regarding vitamins and minerals.This day has see the latest report into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and this report, late by a long time, has documented the impact on the social care sector. The report is damning but does not come as a real surprise to many of us. The Social care sector was an ‘afterthought’ and there was no ‘protective ring’ for care homes, COVID inquiry finds. The social care sector ‘appeared to be something of an afterthought’ and there was no ‘protective ring’ for care homes, the COVID inquiry has found. Action to protect carers and care users during the pandemic ‘came too late, with devastating consequences’, with chair Baroness Hallett saying widespread failures were ‘the direct result of an absence of proper pandemic planning for the adult social care sector’. ‘The UK government and devolved administrations knew, prior to the pandemic, of the extreme vulnerability of care home residents to respiratory viruses,’ the inquiry concludes. In particular, the report highlights the fact that the then Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, was on the TV almost daily claiming that a ‘protective ring’ had been placed around  are homes but this was very far from the truth. Even at the time care workers in residential homes were trying to protect themselves by buying and adapting black plastic bin liners because  there was a critical shortage of PPE (‘Personal and Protective Equipment’) Now that this report has seen the light of day, I wonder if there will be any Panorama specials castigating the role of the government and decision  makers with in it but I doubt it somehow. The  whole point of enquiries of this nature is to make sure that mistakes of this nature and magnitude do not occur in the future but it would not surprise me if we were to learn that planning for next pandemic along (of which there is bound to be one) is woefully inadequate as the government seems short of money for practically everything including imminent threats from a nationalistic Russia threatening our infrastructure. If one wished to be particularly pessimistic, one could point to the role of AI in the hands of malevolent actors that could create another pandemic within about ten years against which most of the world would be defenceless.

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.

The evening before last, nothing very much seemed to grab my attention on the conventional TV channels so I turned my attention to PBS, which is the Public Broadcasting Service hosted in the USA. This is a membership organisation of over 330 independently owned and operated local public television stations across the United States, rather than a traditional centralised commercial network and it often broadcasts programmes of a documentary nature, leaving entertainment to other networks. The programme that I started watching was ‘Edwardian Society in Colour’ where film shot in the Edwardian period, about 1901-1914 had been colourised. What was shown was, in effect, a social history of some of the ‘ordinary’ people of this country and included were events like the coming of the trams to towns in Lancashire, the rise of the suffragette movement, some early football matches and the preparations made for war in which young men enlisted in a burst of patriotic fervour thinking that the war with Germany would be over ‘in weeks’ and they would be at home in time for Christmas. Whatever impressions we have of these times are generally presented to us through popular series such as ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ or more recently ‘Downton Abbey’ so the PBS system is undoubtedly a source of much authentic information. Actually, during the week I had turned to PBS for a programme on the association of Edwards VIII  with the Nazis under the title ‘Britain’s Traitor King’ and I doubt whether the BBC could have shown this programme particularly with that kind of title. This is the time of year when organisations of various types are thinking of pre-Christmas type meals for their membership and yesterday, I signed myself up for one such meal organised through the CAMEO group of the Methodist centre whilst my own church is organising something similar in November. During the forthcoming week, I shall be making some preparations for the family meal I am about to prepare for next week on the occasion of the visit of Meg’s cousins for a family ‘get together’ next weekend will also see the end of British Summer Time and then the dark mornings will really kick in with a vengeance. It may have to be the time when I revert to a breakfast of warming porridge to keep me going throughout the morning. There are two months in the year which I always think have to be endured rather than enjoyed  and they are November and February respectively, both with prospects of better things to come in the months that follow them. Although the weather is chilly in the mornings, I am hoping for a day of sunny weather at the start of the week so that I can get the penultimate burst of my lawn mowings to be undertaken but it looks as though e might expect a spell of rainy weather as the week proceeds. But in November, we should have the sequelae of the American mid-term elections to savour as well as the transmission of some of the world series of rugby matches when the Northern and Southern hemisphere face off against each other.

One of the longest serving members of my church who has given decades of service to his local parish has been awarded a special medal by the Pope called the Benemerenti (= in Latin ‘well deserving person’) medal. It apparently takes an age for such a medal to be awarded as it has to go through  layers of Vatican bureaucracy but one such medal has been awarded to a long serving parishioner. He was going to be presented with this special medal during the 10.30 service and so many members of the parish turned up to witness the well deserving parishioner be awarded his medal. I had actually attended the earlier service but had then gone on the road to pick up a copy of my usual Sunday newspaper, liberate some money from the ATM and get the car washed before coming home and coking myself a cheese omelette. I then made my way back to the church to witness the medal presentation and then joined a huge crowd of parishioners in the parish hall for coffee, biscuits and the bestowal of congratulations. I was delighted to make contact with the Spanish parishioner with whom I wanted to meet so that we could arrange a mutual coffee date. As we were exchanging a few words in Spanish, our conversation was overheard by a third parishioner and we chatted away to each other, mainly in English, until we were joined by a fourth person who knew some Spanish as her second language having spent a year in Spain on her youth. So the four of us have set up a ‘date’ at the end of next week when we can chat away in Spanish to each other to help to improve our skills. All of this happened relatively spontaneously but it was a happy coincidence of the four of us. Another extraordinary coincidence is that that my initial contact was herself a native of La Coruña which is the town in which one of most intimate Spanish friends happens to live. After I returned home, I made myself a light repast by way of lunch and then my son called around and we exchanged news of the past week to each other over a cup of coffee. My son also helped me to ensure that I had my Nectar card well and truly installed on my iPhone so in view of the offers that I may well receive in this direction. From what I read, it looks as though there are some general Nectar discounts which are available sore wide to all card holders but also some that are somewhat more personalised to the individual shopper based upon their shopping habits. I appreciate that all of these offers are aimed in the direction of ensuring customer loyalty but if, after all, if a customer sends £50 a week for 50 weeks of the year then we are taking  about a spend of £2,500 in any one year which is why the supermarkets are persisting in their offers. I may well be tempted to transfer my allegiance to the newly opened Sainsbury store in town even though it is slight awkward to reach. There is plenty of car parking provided which is a good recommendation in any case. There seems to be some absorbing TV to absorb my attention this evening and also yet another production of ‘Emma’ which I will start to view but reject if it is the American version (with American actors and accents) which does not do justice to Jane Austen’s work.

The comings and goings in the Trump White House are always a source of some excitement and the world’s press was wondering what to make of Katy Zaccharia who was the latest in a succession of young, blond and female staffers, of whom Trump is so proud, to act as the Press Secretary. Now this is an important job and one not without difficulty as a requisite amount of spin has to be applied whilst not telling any actual inaccuracies which could be fact-checked by a roomful of journalists. But Kay Zacharia performed abysmally in her first televised press conference and took only three questions from right-leaning news outlets taking some 14 minutes to do so. At one point in her gushing performance, she confused the president with her own husband and was evidently ill prepared. But there was a damning point in her résumé (= CV) which proved to be her ultimate downfall. When asked about her qualifications to be called a lawyer by having passed the Bar examination, it transpired that she had failed her Bar examination which she claimed did not matter as she had just got married and was moving to China. So to the question ‘When did you pass your Bar examination’, a reply to the effect that it was when she moved to China which was such a non-denial of her failure that the rest of the press seized upon her. Now to claim to be a lawyer when you are not could well be a case of criminal deception and her case could be referred to the California Bar Association. Zacharia repeatedly referred to herself as a ‘lawyer’ in television appearances and listed her title as ‘general  counsel’ for a nonprofit body. Under California law, holding oneself out as a licensed attorney without an active state bar license is a crime. Reporting from the Wall Street Journal confirmed that while Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law, she took the California bar exam in 2011 and failed it, never subsequently passing the exam in any U.S. jurisdiction. Zacharia publicly admitted to this fact in recent interviews. So after five days in the job, Donald Trump was forced to intervene and to ask her whether she felt that the job was really for her which was, in effect, a sacking. This also calls into effect Trump’s judgement, particularly as it seems to have bypassed the White House Chief of Staff who would normally scrutinise such appointments rigorously to avoid mess ups of the type that we have just witnessed. The previous record minimum time for staying in place as Press Secretary was eleven days so a five day stint in the job easily breaks this record. In the run up to the mid-term elections in about eleven days time, the appointment of a Press Secretary is crucial although Donald Trump is used to making his own announcements either whilst scurrying to his helicopter on the White House lawn or through  his own ‘Truth Social’ media channel.  Turning to more domestic matters, I am trying to make contact with a fellow parishioner who is Spanish and whom I am anxious to meet so that we can have a chat in Spanish but we tend to attend different services at the weekend. I gave my card to one of the ‘church elders’ who is in contact with her and I received a text message from her recently so that we can try and coincide and then make a proper appointment for a coffee somewhere. By all accounts, she is quite keen to chat with someone in her native language and, although my own Spanish is very rusty, no doubt I can get by as and when we do actually meet. It may be that we can coincide for a minute or so this weekend after one of the church services so that we can recognise each other and then make any further arrangements. The latest venture in the soup making saga is going to be mushroom soup of which I now have a copious supply but I am going to give them an initial fry-off in a pan to enhance the flavour rather than just putting them raw into the soup maker.

On the first and third Saturday of each month, the Methodist centre in town hosts what is called a C.A.M.E.O. (Come And Meet Each Other) gathering  for the widowed and separated. This weekend being in store for us. Today was quiz day so we had three rounds of quiz followed by a picture quiz in which we had to identify the well known sweets of yesteryear. Each table gave themselves a name and we called ourselves the ‘Merry Widows’ and seemed to get better and better as the quizzes wore on, eventually emerging as the overall winners but with no prizes to claim. After that I returned home and heated up some of yesterday’s leftovers which was enough food for me in the middle of the day. Thinking the morning might be a long one, I had breakfasted on a cheese omelette which sustained me right through until lunch time. Then I indulged in watching a little Michael Portillo travelogue on Spain and he was visiting Mallorca which was very interesting – it might be possible for me to catch up on some of the others in the series if ‘Channel 5’ on my Smart TV allows it, which is possible. During the later part of the afternoon, I started to prepare this week’s soup batch which is to be mushroom. First, though, I needed to prepare the ‘bass notes’ for the soup so I prepared a mixture of onion, pepper, carrot and sweet potato with the addition o a little garlic and then set about frying off the mushrooms in two batches. I do not know how today’s recipe will pan out as the recipe which  I am following calls for some butter, olive oil and white wine to be added at the blending stage which did but I shall have to wait until the entire batch is prepared to see if everything  turns out OK. I have not had a failure yet but there is always a first time, I suppose, in which the end product does not quite live up to expectations so we shall just have to wait and see. My soups generally end up with a touch of ‘creme fraiche’ and sometimes, when  I remember, some coconut milk but I have neglected the coconut milk on this occasion.

Andy Burnham, the UK’s Prime Minister, has floated the idea that the UK should consider the relationship that we have with the UK including perhaps the idea of eventually rejoining the EC. Whether or not this is is possible is a tricky political question but the direction of travel seems a very sensible one. There are probably a series of measures that can be taken including joining the customs union and reducing as many trade barriers as possible. But the exact nature of any rapprochement remains to be seen. It might be that the country finds a point of balance which satisfies many if it can enjoy as many of the benefits without full membership as currently enjoyed by Switzerland. The trouble is that if truth be known, Britain had a very good deal with Europe once various opt-outs and rebates had been negotiated, and it is very unlikely that we would ever get such favourable terms again. But most European leaders seem very favourable to the concept of the UK eventually rejoining the bloc. However, the French president, Macron has warned there would be no ​halfway house ⁠on membership requirements and former EU Brexit officials have previously warned that the UK would not enjoy exceptional terms if it decided to rejoin the EU. The UK may have to join the Euro if it wanted to return, join the Schengen passport-free zone, and it would be unlikely to get the rebate it negotiated previously. The UK rebate was a financial mechanism negotiated by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, reducing Britain’s EU budget contribution by around 66 per cent. British public opinion is largely in favour with figures of about 55%-60% in favour and some 35% opposed. The point was made in a recent TV programme that at the time of the last referendum, any British person resident at least temporarily in the EU was excluded from the vote and if they had been included the majority in favour of leaving might have shrunk to vanishing small proportions. I think that most of the country is now of the view that the proposed benefits to the UK of Brexit have not materialised and we now appreciate the costs of not being in the EU. The problem for the Brexiteers is that when asked a simple question if they can name a single benefit from being outside the EU, the answer came there none. But I think this debate will rumble on and on for years. Yesterday was quite a busy day as after my Tai Chi class I had to come hone and had a swift lunch of a prawn omelette before attending my Spanish conversation class which takes place once a month and is held in a neighbouring village hall. However, the day may turn out to be a more relaxing one than the day before. I have some plans to make some vegetable stock in the afternoon but in the morning as nothing else is planned, I may go for a wander around the newly opened Sainsbury’s, the delights of which I still have to savour. Many of my acquaintances had wished that the store had utilised an upper floor and stocked sone non-food items and certainly the discount stores such as Lidl and Aldo benefit from the framed ‘middle aisles’ in which shoppers van browse and occasionally be tempted by domestic items such as clothing and household goods. 

As I had a day free of any pressing commitments, I drove down to pick up my newspaper and to have a ‘free’ coffee and then thought  would  venture forth to undertake a reconnaissance of the newly opened Sainsbury’s store which opened its doors  week ago. When I arrived, I found that there was enough parking for me but the minute I entered the store,  was prevailed upon to use a Nectar card which I declined at that stage. My first impressions of the store were very favourable and there was plenty of space in the wide aisles and the vegetables seemed copious in supply and of good quality. By way of comparison, a 1kg bag of carrots is 49p in Aldi, 69p in Sainsbury’s  and 75p in Waitrose and perhaps this one item speaks volumes about the pricing structures of the local supermarkets. I was thinking of transferring my allegiance from Aldi to Sainsbury and still might do so as the range of choice is greater albeit at a somewhat higher  price. Very impressionistically, the quality of the Sainsbury’s produce might be a tad higher but one would have to buy it and consume it for a few weeks before a definitive judgement can be made.  Knowing that I am going to provide a meal centred around lamb when Meg’s cousins come to Sunday lunch  about nine days time, I thought I would pursue their offerings of lamb joints and was astonished to discover that if you had a Nectar card, the lamb was offered at half price. So this a clincher for me so I  drove straight home to install the Nectar app, which proved to be a bit of a nightmare. I got as far as an account being created and a Nectar account number but the app kept sending me round and round in circles, asking that my email ID be verified, after which it seemed to get stuck in a loop and ask me to verify another time and so on. The problem may have been that I had a Nectar card about ten or twenty years ago and this may have complicated the issue, which even the helpline could not resolve. Eventually, I got a solution which involved deleting the app and then relying upon a link that Nectar had sent me which seemed to give me access to my account. This took about an hour and a half of messing around so I made myself a quick bit of lunch and then struck out for the Sainsbury’s store a second time. The account details seemed to work and I purchased the lamb I needed half price and then visited the nearby smaller Aldi store. where I treated myself to anther stock pot to complement the excellent saucepan  bought the other day. I think that the vegetable stock preparation which I had thought I might do during the course of the afternoon may have to be missed out for today but I have some spare cubes prepared about ten days ago which should suffice. At the moment, they are frozen into an ice-cube container in the freezer but I might pop them all out and wrap them in some tinfoil so that they approximate to the commercial product. I noticed that Sainsbury’s stocked the Kallo Organic very low salt cubes and I believe that Knorr used to manufacture a zero salt alternative but this may have been withdrawn. The AI advice on the web is to make your own vegetable stock salt free which actually is what I am doing and intend to continue doing. 

There is a report in today’s media about the ways in which migrants to the UK are housed after arrival. Generally, the Home Office has sought out areas in the country is which accommodation costs are least which generally means areas where the housing is cheap. So areas like Hyndburn in Lancashire, being a low cost area, is also one of the communities with a high degree of social deprivation. It is regrettable but understandable that  in these areas community tensions can become very high when deprived and not well educated or employed people find a new community of migrants in their midst. So the alternative is to house migrants in mrde ‘middle-class’ areas where, of course, the community has even more social power to object and to successfully resist. One is led to the conclusion that the Home Office does search out areas in the country which are not only cheap but where the ability of the receiving community to resist is very low. Such was the case in Stoke on Trent where a lot of the cheapest housing country attracted the attention of Home Office planners. The night before last, I was engaged in pulling out the two wheelie bins to the kerbside ready for emptying early the following morning. My neighbours – a young couple – observed me examining the recently located road sign to make sure it had been re-installed correctly and were evidently anxious that all was well. I managed to reassure them and they were telling me that having bought the house, they intended to stay there for 40 years and so had been investing heavily in things like solar panels, a heat extraction and air conditioning unit and were now turning their attention to their little bit of ‘front ‘garden’ which had been landscaped and was now to be covered in some good pebbles. I mentioned that as the road sign had become a little beset by a green moss in places, I intended when I had a moment to come out with a bucket of some hot bleach and give the whole sign a good cleansing which, of course it hasn’t had for years. The TV did not seem particularly inspiring the evening before last so I engaged myself in solving (successfully) a ‘Super fiendish’ Sudoku whilst listening to ClassicFM. But at 9.00pm there was a Brian Cox program on ‘The Planets’ which I found both fascinating and absorbing. Ss well as describing the history and evolution of our planetary system, Cox could also illustrate his presentation with photographs where we had managed to land cameras successfully upon the surfaces of our immediate neighbours such as Mercury, Venus and Mars. There is going to be more of this series each week so I must look out for them. Whilst watching Sky News, I am sure that I caught part of an advert advertising a future showing (perhaps in parts) of the remake of Mozart’s biography ‘Amadeus’ in a couple of weeks time. However, an AI search does not reveal any more news that this is about to happen but I earnestly hope that it does and will look out for it, hopefully broadcast on the Sky Arts channel on Tuesdays.

In the morning, I attended my Tai Chi class which is one of my routines for the week. Afterwards, I walked with my banker friend and another class mate as far at the ‘Gifts of Love’ café which I think we all enjoy going to because it is that little bit out of the ordinary. Then, after our coffee break and we all went our separate ways I popped into the branch of my bank, one of the few still open to customers on the High Street. The branch was deserted but there were two young staff on the help desk  and another colleague in the background. I had a very simple query to put to the bank, following an incident which had occurred a couple of days earlier. I have a little specialised wallet which includes all of the cards that I might need in everyday use including my bank debit card and driving licence. Now I had inadvertently put this on a window sill and when  I subsequently started to look for it, it could not be found in the placewhere it ought to have been and I had about ten minutes of complete panic whilst I searched for it and eventually found it. I started to apply  my mind to wondering what type of backup system could be employed had I genuinely lost my wallet of cards (which can happen to any of us on occasions) So I asked the bank staff whether they ever issued a second card associated with the usual debit card which could be kept in a safe place until a duplicate card had been reissued which might take some days. I was not surprised when the two young staff answered in the negative but then they consulted with their older, and presumably more knowledgeable colleague.  I was told that upon request I could have a second card, the sole use of which was to act as an ATM card and this could be issued I addition to, and running alongside, my existing debit card. So this was like music to my ears and the bank staff ordered it  and it should be with me in a few days time. Now I think the younger staff were not aware of this facility and even a AI search does not reveal that it is possible  but it will exactly fit my needs as I know that I only need take my ATM card out with me when I wish to access some cash, leaving my debit card securely at home. As I was in the proximity of the charity shops, I popped into one of them and discovered something which is going to be incredibly useful to me. There are occasions when I wake up in the middle of the night after I have only been asleep for an hour or so and there is a great temptation to nibble something to help me get back to sleep again. It occurred to me that a small portion of my own home made soup with very few calories and completely salt and sugar free might be a useful beverage to have on such occasions. What I found were a couple of quite large, white beakers with the ‘Home’ branding (an thus they might originate from John Lewis or Tesco) Now these each hold practically a pint and I intend to use them exclusively for soup which I may consume as part of my nocturnal perambulations. There are good quality being Microwave and Dishwasher proof, so  I can always have a couple of soups available to me in the fridge ready for a quick heating in the microwave as required.

In the US, the increasing authoritarian and capricious Donald Trump had tried to ban prominent news gathering organisations from White House press briefings. These briefings are now attended by Trump sycophants who asked completely ‘oatsy’ and non-threatening questions and thus genuine journalistic scrutiny of the regime is made almost impossible. A federal judge has extended White House access for CNN, MS NOW and ‌Politico journalists, deciding on Tuesday that Donald Trump’s attempt to ban them was unlawful. The journalists originally had their access reinstated temporarily through an emergency order on 24 September by US District Judge Timothy Kelly, who has now elaborated on his decision. The ruling will see the news organisations retain their access until a final judgment is reached in the lawsuit they brought, unless an appeals court lifts the order. In the run up to the mid-term elections, now less than three weeks away, this has to be a smidgeon of good news. We also learnt in the last few days that the Pope who had undergone a routine medical examination appeared to have a small nodule in one of his lungs. This has now been operated upon and found to be cancerous and the surgeons removed the lower one third of one of the lobes of his lung. The illness of a Pontiff is always sad news for those of the Catholic faith but at least the problem was diagnosed and then treated very promptly. Pope Leo, who is originally from the US, has no previously known health problems and is physically active, with weekly games of tennis and swimming at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo. Turning to domestic politics, we are now in the run-up period to John Healey’s first budget and he seems to be constrained on every side. But the Chancellor has been the recipient of some better news from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which has upgraded the UK’s growth forecast for 2026 to 1.3%, up from its previous 1% prediction, though warning of rising inflation and a slowdown heading into 2027. There are also hints, emanating from the Treasury, that the Chancellor is planning some measures which may be judged to be business friendly. There is some speculation that the Chancellor may reverse some of the ‘fiscal drag’ measures thus giving businesses a little respite. Apart from that, thee are indications that we might expect a ‘steady as she goes’ budget. There is an argument, which I have come across recently, that in comparisons with our continental neighbours we chop and change directions in our budgets much too frequently and what businesses crave is some long-term stability so that they can make forward planning a little more easily. When going through my newspapers to extract press cuttings recently, my eyes lit up at an article by Steve Webb, an ex Liberal Democrat Pensions minister who probably knows more about pensions than anyone else in the country. It is reported that Webb is working on a proposal, which I actually suggested in this blog some months ago, to the effect that the middle aged be asked to contribute about £30 a month to a Social Care fund. The incentive for the individual is that their own social care meets might be largely met when they needed in old age by building up their own social care fund entitlement. The guts of the plan are that millions of people aged 40 and over, including pensioners, could be automatically signed up to a new social care scheme under proposals inspired by the UK’s workplace pension system. The plan, put forward by former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb and fellow experts at consultancy LCP, would see taxpayers automatically enrolled into paying a social care premium, with the option to opt out. Those who stayed in the scheme would build up a discount (of about 4% for each successfully completed year of contributions) on their future social care bills the longer they paid in. Now the Germans have run a scheme like this for years (and let it be noted that Bismarck’s plans for old age pensions ante-dated our own plans introduced in 1911) Actually, Boris Johnson to his credit did attempt to introduce a social care levy but this was a very short-lived experiment and was killed off by the disastrous Liz Truss regime, but it is reported that the government are showing some interest in this new scheme and it would not be the first time that the Liberal Democrats have come up with innovative proposals which are at first rejected by rival political parties but eventually adopted by them.

Being midweek, I journeyed as far as the Methodist Centre and sat down to have a coffee with an old Waitrose coffee bar acquaintance and then after she left I joined another group of ladies I know quite well by sight. Then  I went to my local Aldi’s to do my weekly shopping making sure that I had a copious supply of mushrooms which is going to be my soup for his weekend. On my way around the store I bumped into one of my regular Tai Chi class members and we had quite an extended natter, manly on the subject of ‘dodgy hips’. Having been given a very long waiting time but having inherited some money from an uncle who had died, my contact was prepared to go and have a new hip done privately (at what seemed to me to be a huge cost of 17k) but had suddenly and unexpectedly received an appointment via the NHS. Whether this is going to radically shorten her waiting time is uncertain and, in any case,I did not particularly want to talk about medical procedures whilst chatting in a supermarket aisle but my fellow class member was chatty and engaging so I was happy to let the conversation take its course. One of the interesting things about Aldi is the famed ‘middle aisle’ which stores all kinds of household goods you would not normally think of buying but the quality  is generally quite acceptable and tends to be end of manufacturer ranges. I espied the last one of a 16cm saucepan which seemed to be built of a quite heavy aluminium metal but with a superb non stick coating so I bought this on impulse and was glad I had done so. The technology employed was Swiss and incorporated a new generation of coating called ILAG which is guaranteed PTFE free and the non stick qualities of which are said to be superb. I put this to the test immediately by using it to boil some fine beans which I then drain and fry off with some sun-dried tomato and sun-dried pepper, utilising some of the oil in which the vegetables are sold in their jar. I used these veg to accompany a quiche and had a very tasty dinner which I enjoyed after all of the shopping had been put safely away.

The day before yesterday did not start off particularly well. After I had got myself up and breakfasted, I started my journey down into town to pick up my daily newspaper but two large lorries were partially occluding the end of my drive and, to my dismay, the road sign that I had had erected some years before, which was located in a narrow gravel bed between the kerbstone and a neighbour’s fence, had been uprooted. It took me some time to navigate around the lorries and to get the briefest explanation of what they were doing but as I availed myself of a free coffee in Waitrose, I phoned my son to inform him of what was going on and how I should remonstrate with the workmen. On my may home, I got the car into the drive and then demanded an explanation from the workmen They explained that they were employed to extend a neighbour’s fence and that they needed to uproot the street sign and reposition it 15cm to one side. They argued that the street sign in the gravel strip was actually on my neighbour’s property but, on reflection, I think they were wrong about this. Nonetheless, the exchanges were polite and courteous and they assured me that the sign would be properly relocated. When I went out later to check everything seemed to be fine and, indeed, the street sign had been repositioned at a very slight angle which would improve its readability to oncoming traffic from a particular direction.

My son and daughter-in-law called around in case I needed any reinforcements in dealing with recalcitrant workmen in the relocation of the street sign, but in the event we seem to have this resolved amicably enough. My daughter-in-law has taken out a subscription to the ‘New Scientist’ and there was one issue that has been discussed  which is of great interest to us both and which effects myself personally. A study published last year has produced evidence that post WWII (World World 2) sugar rationing during the first 1000 days of life (i.e. from conception to the age  of 2) significantly lowered the risks of chronic disease and the onset of disease later on in life. For example those who exposed to sugar rationing had a 35% lower risk of Type 2 diabetes and a 20% reduction in hypertension. Where cardio vascular disease was present in the population, its onset was likely to be delayed  by about three years. Limiting sugar intake during the first 1,000 days led to a dramatic, dose-dependent decrease in adult cancer incidence across five major tissue sites. Most notably, it cut the risk of liver cancer by 69%, prostate cancer by 52%, lung cancer by 41%, rectal cancer by 40%, and breast cancer by 36% More dramatically, those with early-life restricted sugar showed a 25% decrease of all-causes dementia but a 46% lower chance of developing Alzheimer’s. Now all of this is incredibly interesting as it is the result of a so-called natural experiment and we know that the consumption of sugar in the population as a whole doubled when sugar rationing ceased in the early 1950’s. Now having been born a couple  of days after the ending of WWII, these findings are of particular interest to me, personally. The research points to two core pathways that explain why wartime rationing prolonged life. The first is via biological imprinting as low sugar during foetal development and infancy protects metabolic programming, regulates insulin sensitivity, and shields the body from long-term chronic inflammation. The second pathway may be termed Behavioural Programming. Because their taste preferences were shaped during a critical developmental window, individuals who grew up under rationing naturally consumed less sugar and ate healthier, more diverse diets even 50 years later. On a cellular level, individuals raised on sugar rations showed slower biological ageing by 1 to 2.2 years. They exhibited significantly longer leukocyte telomeres (the protective caps on chromosomes that shorten as we age) and reduced chronic immune stress markers like Granzyme B. Now I wonder what the sugar industry has to say about these findings and health professionals  having led a fight against salt (specifically sodium) intake now have a new enemy in their sights. One has to say that the food industry has a lot for which they need to answer and the amounts of both salt and sugar added to foodstuffs, either to preserve them, or to pander to a sweet taste, is by now legendary.

The furore over the BREP (= Bromsgrove Route Enhancement program) involving the A30 that runs down one side of the town received a degree of Parliamentary scrutiny this afternoon. The local Tory MP had secured a debate in Westminster Hall in which there is a debating chamber that I thinks acts as a sort of overflow to the main House of Commons debating chamber. I managed to secure a view of the debate live but only via the parliamentlive.tv link which is not known to many people and is was therefore not on the main Commons TV transmission on Channel 232. In the event, I think there were only about four people in Westminster Hall for the whole of the debate. Our local MP,  Bradley Thomas stood and said his piece, a neighbouring Tory MP lent his support and then a junior minister was detailed to offer the reply to the effect that central government might have provided the money but the management of the scheme is in the hands of Worcestershire County Council and the national Highways Agency were just going to let them get on with it. After years of disruption and a completion date of next Spring, we are promised that a journey  from the North of Bromsgrove to the south of the town  will now take a whole 2 minutes less during the height of the rush hour. The principal cause of the delay is said to be the discovery of streams, culverts, old drainage and gas utilities long since forgotten which got in the way but had to be investigated and then removed. All towns must experience traffic disruption when road works take place but my suspicions are that Bromsgrove has suffered very much more than the average for this type of ‘improvement’ Tonight, a little bit of diversionary TV might have been very much appreciated but there is nothing much on offer until about 9.00pm when  the contributions of John Simpson, the veteran reporter, are to be profiled. His career spans some sixty years so there will be an abundance of news clips and news reports which might make for some entertaining TV.

I am just continuing the discussion of how the wearing of my UMIST scarf is a conversation opener. The day before yesterday when I went to church on Sunday morning, at the conclusion of my ‘tea and biscuits’ refreshment I got into conversation with the priest (or rather he with me) on the subject of the scarf. The stand-in priest (whilst our regular priest is taking a holiday after the funeral of his brother) recognised the scarf as he was an ex-University of Birmingham chaplain and thus provoked an interesting conversation between us including the news of the untimely death of one of my contemporaries who we both happen to have known. Later, when I was at home,I wondered to myself in a ‘quasi-legal’ sense whether I was legally entitled to wear a UMIST scarf so I enlisted the aid of AI to help to answer the question. What I received  back was a most ‘lawyer-like’ judgement as follows. Yes, you are fully entitled to wear a UMIST scarf. While you may have considered yourself a student of the Victoria University of Manchester (the ‘Owens’ Oxford Road campus), the historical relationship between the two institutions directly connects you to both. Here is why your time at the university (1965–1968) solidifies your right to wear it. The Faculty of Technology Relationship- From 1905 until 1994, UMIST (which officially transitioned from the Manchester College of Science and Technology to the name UMIST in 1966, right during your studies) functioned directly as the Faculty of Technology for the Victoria University of Manchester. Shared Graduation and Heritage- During your years on campus, UMIST did not possess independent degree-awarding powers; all of its students were formally awarded degrees by the Victoria University of Manchester. As a student of the university during this shared era, you are an alumnus of the combined ecosystem that ultimately merged into the modern University of Manchester in 2004. Academic and college scarves are traditional items of campus identity rather than restricted legal attire. Anyone with a historical, familial, or nostalgic connection to the institution is welcome to wear one. Well, all of this is most interesting and not quite what I was expecting but both gratifying and reassuring at the same time. After I made a light lunch, I was idly flicking through the TV channels using the remote until I came across another showing of the film ‘Hidden Figures’ which was the story of how the black, female mathematicians had to fight through the prejudices of their day and had collectively made a brilliant contribution of the Americans launch into space who, at the time, were desperately in a ‘Space Race’ with the Russians. Now I have seen this film twice before and the last viewing was within the last month but this time I joined it about  two thirds of the way through into what a thrilling climax in which the exact trajectory of John Glenn (the first  American to successfully orbit the earth) needed to be successfully calculated in order that the spacecraft and its occupant did not burn up during re-entry. To be honest, I was really enthralled by another viewing of the film and Katherine Johnson has rightfully become an American hero. What I have learned today that the film did not exaggerate was that in 1962, astronaut John Glenn refused to fly into orbit until Johnson personally re-verified the electronic computer’s math for his trajectory and splashdown coordinates. She calculated the flight paths and trajectories for the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 and in 2015 President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 2020 at the ripe old age of 101 – to which one can only remark ‘What a life!’

After the film was over, I decided to start to dip into the book I had recently ordered and received which was Kasley William: ‘The Art and Science of Connection’ in which she argues strongly for the acceptance of ‘social health’ to complete  the triad of physical health + mental health. She writes clearly and unemotionally but with a great deal of conviction and her assertions of research findings are backed up by the appropriate scientific references. I really enjoyed reading the Introductory and first chapter of the book and will let the pleasure of reading the rest of it unfold one day at a time as I read it chapter by chapter. It is one of those books which immediately makes you want to discuss and share the contents with friends and acquaintances, which I am sure I will do in the days ahead. In the late afternoon, I received a welcome call from my next-door neighbour. She works in a nearby large garden centre which also has a cook-shop and delicatessen area, and she occasionally brings me little bits and pieces from the delicatessen that would normally be thrown away, and these are always welcome. We discussed some items of joint culinary interest soup making and the family meal  shall be preparing on a fortnight probably featuring a lamb stew which she knows all about being brought up on a farm in Wales) In the late afternoon and early evening, I watched the last two conjoined episodes of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ which is both gripping and poignant. I have a slight connection with the ending of the book which I read as one of collection of ‘free’ books in one of the Saga hotels in which Meg and  stayed in Southern Spain. After stabbing her abusive lover to death, Tess and Angel flee but realise that it is only a question of time before Tess is caught. But whilst they were fleeing, Tess makes Angel promise that after her execution Angel would marry her sister, Liza-Lu. The final scene from the book (and the film) show Angel and Tess’s sister, Liza-Lu, climbing West Hill, Winchester which affords the view of the prison just as Tess was being hanged. Now when I worked at the University of Winchester, I used to walk through the West Hill cemetery  which is now a public park with a footpath giving  access to the University. Now I used to walk through this cemetery practically every day when caught the train to Winchester and then walked the mile to the University and there is indeed a point along the route which overlooks Winchester prison, just as Hardy had portrayed.  Wondering from whence Hardy had drawn his inspiration I found that he, too, had a tangled love life which is too complicated to summarise here. But at one point he was infatuated with an actress who played the part of Tess in a play as he thought that he daughter was the embodiment of the woman who had formed the inspiration for Tess. Another of his amorous episodes involved Hardy installing a woman as his ‘secretary’ whilst his own wife was confined to upstairs rooms. For the faint-hearted, these emotional entanglements seemed to be more associated with infatuation,  and a more spiritual type of yearning rather than a more conventional male lust and, incidentally, Hardy seems to have a penchant for women some 35 years his junior.

As we awoke yesterday morning, it was to a further and quite dramatic attack upon Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, by the Iranian-backed Houthis. This is the last thing that Donald Trump might need with only just three weeks to go to the mid-term elections but the indications are that the Americans might join in and support a missile attack against the Iranians and/or Houthi rebels. The airport had been attacked and at least a dozen were killed outright with a further 300 injured, overwhelming the hospitals and medical facilities. No doubt these casualty figures might rise as the rest of Europe and America wakes up in the morning. We know that the war is deeply unpopular but this did not prevent Donald Trump from claiming that the Nobel Peace Prize ought to be awarded to him for having ‘solved’ at least 8 conflicts throughout the world (not that the rest of is have noticed). Instead, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 was awarded to Navi Pillay (South Africa) for her decades-long work prosecuting genocide, war crimes, and fighting apartheid. The night before, I experienced rather an uncomfortable night having received  vaccinations in each arm the day before. I expected some soreness and tenderness and my right arm, the recipient of the COVID vaccine, is indeed  a lot more sore than the other one.  I expected that I would not experience a particularly good night’s sleep and, indeed, feel a little fragile in the morning. Accordingly, I am going to adapt my routines somewhat and after church this morning and the coffee refreshment, I am going to come straight home and ‘coddle’ myself for the day. Normally  I have a routine to wash the car but I am not doing this morning but having collected my newspaper from the garage I shall come straight home. I had intended to perhaps go out and make a day’s excursion to see Elgar’s birthplace, recently acquired by the National Trust so this is being given a definite miss this week. The weather has turned pretty cold and miserable and it will take some willpower to turn out and attend church in the morning. I know that I have the two concluding episodes of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ in the late afternoon to which to look forward, As I write this morning, ClassicFM are playing ‘Pelagia’s Song’ from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin which is one of my favourite films, perhaps because the Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz, reminds me in her physical appearance and demeanour of Meg. Lunch is going to be quite a challenge today because my appetite is a little depressed so I might try something quite simple, such as an omelette, that good old stand-by. Now that the party conference season is over, the political programmes will no doubt have other bones upon which to chew, the principal whipping boy at the moment being Zak Polanski who has rather bungled the the Green party’s latest stance centering on Zionism, anti-Semitism and criticism of the current Israeli regime. To try and get a bit better informed in this debate, I have recently discovered the following. Albert Einstein supported a cultural Jewish homeland in Palestine to escape persecution, but he consistently opposed the creation of an exclusive, sovereign Jewish nation-state with borders, an army, and political dominance over Arabs. Einstein believed in a spiritual and cultural home for Jewish people to revive community and to end ‘pariah status,’ not a separate national state. This is all quite interesting but I wonder how widely shared, or even accepted, the views of Einstein happen to be.

Being a creature of habit, I always tend to occupy the same position in a pew when I go to church as do my fellow members of the congregation.  This is towards the front of the church and two pews before me, a fellow parishioner does the same. In her case, she is a carer for her father and when she comes she always occupies the same pew where there is a slight ‘niche’ which will accommodate her father’s wheelchair. In the past, I have seen her (very expertly) getting her father from his wheelchair into her car and folding up the wheelchair to put it into the car boot. As I myself knew exactly the routine through  which she had to go, I offered some her some assistance on one occasion which, as it happened, she did not need. But she does always attend the coffee and biscuits session in the parish hall after Mass and we have typically just exchanged a few words with each other. Not knowing about her father’s dietary habits, I did make an offer of some excess soup which I am making every weekend because I remember how I used to make Meg and I a cup of hot soup after we had returned from our daily sojourn to town and back in her wheelchair. This weekend, my fellow parishioner was the grateful recipient of the sweet potato soup I made yesterday and to cut a long story short, I hope that we can engage in a short visit to each other’s houses in the future primarily to share information and to see what offers of mutual support we may be able to offer each other as the weeks unfold. When I go out these days, I always wear my UMIST (= University of Manchester Institute of Technology) scarf and this not only attracts attention but is a magnificent conversation opener. Now this scarf was identical to the main University of Manchester but was characterised by an additional and very colourful stripe. I purchased it about a year ago when I thought I had mislaid my main university  scarf although it did subsequently turn up. Whether I am entitled to wear a UMIST rather than an ‘Owens College’ scarf is a moot point but  I can always argue that when I attended the University of Manchester, UMIST was still officially the Faculty of Technology of the older university. Here is a brief summary of the intertwined relationships. UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) survived as an independent university for 10 years (from 1994 to 2004), or 48 years if measured from when it first gained independent university-college status. In 1955–1956, it received its Royal Charter as the Manchester College of Science and Technology, achieving independent status and separate public funding. In 1966 it was renamed the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), though it still maintained close ties with the Victoria University of Manchester as its Faculty of Technology. In 1994 it gained full university autonomy and its own independent degree-awarding powers but in 2004 was re-absorbed back into its parent university. Now there is a point to all of this story telling because in 2004, the newly expanded university rebranded itself and the traditional scarf which I had originally bought in 1965 (the year before the ‘independence’ of UMIST) is no longer made, sold or even available in some of the specialised web sites that sell university scarves. So I wear my UMIST scarf with some pride and I am often stopped, as was the case yesterday, of an alumni of Manchester University who happened to be at university at exactly  the same time period as myself (1965-68).