Quite unusually, I slept in for an hour longer this morning but this is of no particular consequence as there are no pressing engagements for me today as I contemplate the weekend. I have a great deal of time for one of Sky News’ correspondents who is Beth Rigby and reports with a great deal of acumen about the positive results of the visit of Trump to our shores in the last day or so. Starmer went all out to flex all the soft power he could deploy to garner some hard results and she reports on some real wins. The show-stopper US-UK tech partnership was hailed by both sides as a new phase in the special relationship, as Trump gathered some of the world’s biggest tech billionaires – Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and Apple’s Tim Cook – to attend the signing of the deal at Chequers. Number 10 added up a series of planned commercial decisions to tout the prospect of £150bn of inward investment. Nonetheless, I think that Beth Rigby missed a trick yesterday, when at the press conference she posed a series of questions to Donald Trump. These had been very carefully framed and were penetrating, asking questions about Gaza, the Ukraine and finally Peter Mandelson. But by asking about three questions in one and citing the Peter Mandelson question as the last one, Donald Trump managed to evade giving an answer to the first two questions and replied to the part of the question about Mandelson (who was the British ambassador, after all who Trump had met only a few days before) by giving the most cursory of replies that he scarcely knew the man and over to Keir Starmer to answer the question. The news about all of this inward investment must have sounded like music to politician’s ears but the cynical part of me wonders whether it is actually going to happen. After all, they are only words and it would certainly not be the first time that flows of money would be promised that would never materialise. In the past, I am certain that there have been occasions when large sums of money were promised (and I am thinking of Gordon Brown’s attempts to alleviate 3rd World debt as well as the climate change promises) but a year down the line and nothing seems to have been forthcoming. Before I was well and truly up by which I mean my Pilates exercises done and then showered, my son called around as he often does after his early morning swim in which he engages several times a week. I abandoned my session on the laptop to go and have a chat with him. We put the new washing machine through its paces which I did not want to do yesterday morning when I was out of the house. So, we put the machine through a simple cycle and everything worked out fine with no leaks from the new connection which was reassuring. Then we had a long discussion about things technological as he was having his breakfast (fish on bread) which is part of his routine when he calls around. Just before he left, I solicited his help to put a navigation setting in the car’s SatNav which I did not know exactly how to do. Somewhat naively, I assumed that once within the SatNav system I could save a route but I actually needed to save it an a ‘Favourites’ which also stores things such as music stations and goodness knows what else besides. So, I was delighted to get this onto the system because in the past when I have navigated this route it has always been a bit hit and miss but now, I have safely stored and accessible within the systems of the car.
Later in the morning and quite a lot later than usual, I took the car down into town and then visited my ‘Donkey sanctuary’ cafe which is a regular slot for me on this day of the week. I had an interesting conversation with one of the volunteers I the shop I know well. I then visited several shops on the High Street to make some purchases before eventually returning home quite late. I made myself a lunch of turkey meat in an onion gravy served on some salad before having a little doze in the afternoon. The major event of the day to which I am looking forward is actually the women’s rugby semi-final match between New Zealand and Canada and I suspect that New Zealand will prevail in this contest. The other semi-final will be between England and France but that is the next day. For a bit of light relief, I look at some of the liberal political websites to which YouTube gives a platform and some of these are focus considerably on Donald Trump – one regular slot is even called ‘Inside Trump’s Brain’ Several of these websites are convinced that Donald Trump is quite seriously ill or, at least, has travelled some way along the road of a diagnosis of dementia. All of these websites demonstrate the fact that Trump is frequently mistaken in his public utterances including the speech that he gave at the banquet held for his honour where, once again he claimed that the election that Biden won was actually ‘stolen’ from Trump and he was unfairly deprived of the presidency. But the American websites all make the absolutely fair point that the Main Street Media just overlooks these lapses and Trump is never challenged directly about them. But one thing that the cameras do pick up is the small but noticeable changes of Trump’s physical appearance. One item is the President’s right hand which shows signs of perhaps some bruising (where a canula might have been inserted to administer some drugs?) but the appearance of which appears to be disguised with some crudely applied makeup. Abot a week or so ago, some commentators even claimed to have detected a slight droop of Trump’s mouth as though he had suffered a slight stroke. If I had to make a guess of my own, it is that the president will show some marked signs of deterioration in his health status within the next six months. To forestall any overall rejoicing at this point, then the Vice President Vance would take over and he appears in his policy stances to be as much ‘Trump Mark 2’ as it is possible to be. The Democrats are in some disarray and appear to be holding out for the mid-term elections which are still some 14 months away and are scheduled to be held in the United States, in large part, on November 3, 2026. In this U.S. midterm election, which will occur during Republican President Donald Trump’s non-consecutive second term, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested to determine the 120th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorial elections, as well as numerous state and local elections, will also be contested.