The meeting took place yesterday between Trump and the Ukrainian leader, Zelenskyy in which the use of Tomahawk missiles against Russia was discussed. Now an interesting game of poker is being played out because Trump did not agree with the request for the missiles but neither did he rule it out. It might be that the threat of the missiles being used against Putin might just be sufficient to bring him to the negotiating table so it is the imminent threat of force, rather than force itself, that might be the critical factor. One of the reasons I consult with Sky News regularly is that it seems to bring forward well researched stories and much more quickly than the BBC which I think has been cowed into submission by governments past and present. So, two stories caught my eye which I am sure have not been reported on the BBC but, if so, I must have missed them. The first story relates how the King will become the first British monarch to pray publicly with the Pope since the Reformation 500 years ago during a state visit to the Holy See next week. The King and Queen will meet the new pontiff Pope Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace, his official residence, next Thursday during their trip to Vatican City. In a highly significant moment in relations between the Catholic Church and Church of England, of which His Majesty is Supreme Governor, the King and Queen and the Pope will attend a special ecumenical service in the Sistine Chapel celebrating the ongoing work towards unity and cooperation among different Christian churches. The decision for the King and Pope to pray together during the service will be the first time a monarch and the pontiff have joined together in this type of moment of reflection in the 500 years since the Reformation when, in 1534, King Henry VIII declared himself as head of the Church of England and broke from the papal authority of the Rome Catholic Church. In another historic step, the King will be made ‘Royal Confrater’ of the Abbey of St Paul’s Outside the Walls. The abbot of the community and the archpriest of the basilica wished to confer the title and received the Pope’s approval to do so. To mark the occasion a special seat has been made decorated with the King’s coat of arms. The second story relates to a recent court judgement which must have emerged late in the day and I do not recall seeing in the news headlines. The co-founder of Palestine Action has won a ban on the group’s activities and has also prevailed against the government’s attempt to appeal against this victory. Given that hundreds of people, if not thousands, have been criminalised as terrorists including Quakers and Methodist ministers, it means that some common sense and sense of proportion can now be maintained. Palestine Action can still challenge the decision to ban the group under anti-terror laws after the government lost an appeal. The group was ‘proscribed’ in July, making it illegal to show any support or affiliation for it, following incidents that included breaking into an RAF base. The Home Office appealed after a court granted the group’s co-founder a judicial review and said the ban disproportionately interfered with freedom of speech and assembly. It said the government should also have consulted the group first. Despite the ban, nearly 900 supporters were arrested at a single protest in London last month. The judicial review of the ban was scheduled to begin on 25 November and Friday’s Court of Appeal decision means it can still go ahead. Palestine Action called it a ‘landmark victory’ and said co-founder Huda Ammori had also been granted permission to appeal on two further grounds. Reacting after the court’s decision, Ms Ammori called the ban ‘absurdly authoritarian’ and ‘one of the most extreme attacks on civil liberties in recent British history’. She said 2,000 people had been arrested since it was outlawed and arresting ‘peaceful protesters’ under the Terrorism Act was a misuse of resources. The group’s vandalising of aircraft at Brize Norton in June – with two activists reportedly entering on electric scooters – prompted a security review of UK defence sites.
Yesterday, as I was breakfasting, I received a text from one of my Saturday friends calling off the meeting over coffee that we were due to have this morning as two of our regulars had gone down with colds. So I took some time before I actually walked down into town this morning and resolved that I just have a coffee on my own in Waitrose. On my way down into town, I encountered two sets of people of whom one was a near neighbour and the other used to see us regularly in the Waitrose cafe when it was in existence. To people that I meet like this, I generally start off the conversation informing that about the fact of Meg’s death, now five months ago, and to a man (and woman) they all respond in the same way saying that they used to see me pushing Meg up and down the hill and inferred what has happened as now they see me on my own. What I find amazing is that practically everybody I meet ‘knows’ what has happened and used to observe our regular peregrinations with Meg in her wheelchair. As I was intent on choosing the best route for the wheelchair in view of the horrendous condition of the much-patched pavements, we were evidently observed although I was not looking about me to observe them. On my way down into town and whilst having a coffee, I was actually thinking quite profound philosophical thoughts about how the major religious and ethical systems of the world are often focused on the principle and dualism of opposing forces. Thus in the West, we have the dualism of God/Heaven and the Devil/Hell, Individualism vs. Collectivism, Capitalism vs Socialism., Newtonian Mechanics vs. 20th century Indeterminacy principle whilst in Hindu thought we have forces of Creation v Destruction and, in Chinese thought, Ying vs Yang. Of course, we could go on and on in this vein and I realise that my own knowledge base is fragmentary in the extreme and I am only scratching the surface of the comparison of these cosmological principles. Well, it keeps me out of mischief, I suppose. The day has turned out to be cold and overset with a thick and heavy cloud so a profound shift in the weather pattern is evident as early autumn starts to give way to autumn proper.