I awoke yesterday to temperatures near freezing at 1° but predicted to rise to a dizzying 8° during the day. Not much is in prospect for me today as my son and daughter-in-law are away on holiday in Spain, my Droitwich friend is working frantically before she meets up with colleagues for a Christmas function over the forthcoming weekend and some of my other coffee-drinking companions are not available. I have switched my weekly shopping day to a Wednesday rather than a Thursday because this frees up Thursdays when this week my domestic help and I may be making a start with the Christmas decorations, and I also attend a Tai Chi session at the Methodist centre. The local political news is rather dominated by the decision of the Justice Secretary to radically scale back the number of jury trials in the UK in an attempt to shift an enormous backlog of 80,000 cases before the courts. The suggested reforms are that cases that would involve a sentence of less than three years are to be heard by a judge in some ‘swift’ courts. There is a great deal of concern that one of the most fundamental parts of the British legal system dating back to Magna Carta – the right to trial by jury – is being radically scaled back. It is possible to mount a defence of this scaling back if it could be demonstrated that the backlog of cases, projected to rise to 100,000 cases but one is left with a sinking feeling that the amount of time saved might be minimal whilst the damage done to our legal system is immense. It is possible of course that as there is no manifesto commitment involve, the House of Lords will not assent to the necessary legislation and the whole plan may yet be thwarted. Meanwhile, the Americans are appalled by developments ordered by the American regime. President Trump has ordered that boats, even quite small ones powered, for example, by an outboard motor, leaving the shores of Venezuela are to be attacked and destroyed as they have been designated as ‘narco-terrorists’ and a threat to the United States. In one particular case exercising the minds of many in America, the less than well qualified Secretary of State for Defence Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to the Commander of the fleet to ‘kill them all’ and two survivors from an initial attack were then killed in a second strike. It is unequivocally a war crime to kill unarmed combatants who pose no threat as the two Venezuelan survivors of the initial attack were seen clinging to the wreckage. Now as Pete Hegseth gave a verbal rather than a written instruction to ‘kill them all’ is he guilty of a war crime? He in turn is saying that the responsibility lay with the senior commanding officer and instructions may have been confused in ‘the fog of war’ The American liberal media and many military in the US are convinced that a war crime has been committed but who is going to bring a prosecution as the Department of Justice is concerned only with seeing a retribution upon anybody who has crossed Donald Trump recently. It is possible than even some Republicans are privately appalled by what the American military are being asked to do – even the initial war strike against Venezuelan fishing boats is of dubious legality, let alone killing anybody who survives an initial missile attack to blow such boats out of the water.
In the morning, I decided to look out my trusty old Nokia phone that I use as a backup and I happen to have over £100 credit on it. However, whist I was consulting the web to see about a SIM for another very ancient Nokia phone discovered that the 2G-3G network was to be switched off at the end of the year, thus rendering the phone completely obsolete, So I spent quite a lot of the morning working out whether I could replace this phone with the cheapest possible 4G phone principally so that I could transfer the credit over onto it and not lose it. I use TescoMobile as my provider for a cheap backup phone because unlike other suppliers/networks they keep your credit indefinitely instead of appropriating it after six months as some other providers do. As this occupied a good part of the morning, I was running a late but popped some cubes of beef into a pot to be seared and then cooked slowly with some carrots whilst I went out to do my shopping. In the middle of the day, the supermarket was pretty quiet so I bought a few supplies to see me for the next week tother with some alcohol and soft drinks ready for the party on Sunday. Then after I returned home, unpacked the shopping and got the wheelie bin out ready for collection in the morning, I received a most welcome text from my Droitwich friend who was popping in to see me before she picks up her boys from Bromsgrove school and before her trip to London for the weekend. However, she was not feeling 100% so may truncate this a little and I am hopeful that she can pop into the party on Sunday for an hour or so. Life is rather like ‘Brief Encounters’ as I often joke as we often snatch the odd half hour when we can between other commitments. After she had left I received a communication from the young Asian carer who is helping me to organise Sunday’s little party and the list of ‘invitees’ is up to about 14 at the moment, although there will be a lot of just popping in and popping out as shift patterns dictate. I must admit to not being in a particularly party mood at the moment but this will no doubt change once we get the house decorated a little in its Christmas finery and I start to make some final preparations. I am rather leaving getting the party food until the last moment so that it does not spoil and may even leave it as late as Saturday afternoon before I make my weekly visit to church. If last year is any guide, then I was left with an abundance of food and drink for weeks afterwards as there is always a temptation to over-provide so I will try and judge it a bit more carefully on this occasion.