Yesterday morning, I had set my alarm to get me up at 6.00am rather than 7.00am and my Droitwich friend and I exchanged some motivational texts to get ourselves up and running as we both feel a little like death at this hour in the morning but we both have commitments that mean we cannot really afford to luxuriate in our respective bed, much as we would like to. There are a few glimmers of hope as a way of resolving the Greenland scenario although this might be in the manner of a drowning man clutching at straws. Firstly there is the prospect that Trump’s advisers might persuade him that the European troop enhancements in Greenland on recent days was a way of deterring the Russians, not aiming to attack Americans. Secondly, there is to be a meeting of world international leaders in Davos, Switzerland (an annual event) where other world leaders may be ably to influence Trump. Thirdly, there is recently breaking news that tariffs are having a devastating effect on America’s agricultural economy. Fourthly various Republican members of the US Senate are now getting seriously alarmed and are speaking out against Trump so we may see some of the tectonic plates shifting. Domestically, the Labour government is becoming notorious for its ‘U’ turns in policy. Two are happening before our very eyes. In the first, it looks as though the so-called Hillsborough law which enforces a degree of candour on all public officials following a disaster my be pulled so as to protect our own security services – for whom candour is the worst possible policy, preferring their own clandestine methods of working. But a more significant ‘U’ turn may be a consideration whether or not to follow the Australians and ban all mobile phone use for under 16’s. Even if the UK does not follow Australia, there are various bits of tightening that can be dome immediately such as a legal ban on phones in all type of educational establishments. Some schools are already making pupils deposit their phones in a specially built cage and these are only released when the children are ready to leave school and to go home and this may be an interesting compromise as many parents will use phones to make a rendezvous with their children when children are leaving school. The trouble with the Australian scheme is that enterprising children are already finding their way around restrictions and are sharing this knowledge with fellow pupils but personally I am of the view that there needs to be a massive campaign, along the lines of a health education campaign, instructing school children about the ways in which the internet and social media can be force for bad just as much for good. But as I know from my own day-to-day interactions with the internet, it is easier to get an answer to an intellectual query than it is to look up the same in a reference book. I am afraid that there are no easy answers in this sphere and I do not think that I would like the challenges to be faced on a hourly basis if I were still involved in an education profession. Already in any kind of interaction with a government bureaucracy, a phone call will direct attention to an internet resource which is written at such a level of generality that it never answers the question about which one is phoning in the first place. Even speaking to a ‘human’ can take anything up to half an hour and many of these transactions tend to end in failure as well.
At about breakfast time, my Droitwich friend popped in having dropped her boys off at the school just down the road. She looked at the pile of items that I was due to take down to the charity shop and relieved me of the cagoules and waterproof leggings that we used to use on really wet days in the Lake District but I have doubt we have worn for abut 25 years. But they were still in good condition and my friend thought they could be put to an incredibly good use when her boys are doing the trekking and orienteering section of the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme. I was delighted to see these go to a good home as it were and that just left two bundles of single bed bedding and coverlets and a bag of bathroom associated goods such as some spare wall grab handles (which I no longer need as got a permanent one fitted whilst Meg was alive) These three bundles of things I trundled along to the Salvation Army shop where they were placed on the pile of other unwanted goods. Once sorted through, some of the bedding materials they might display in the shop to be sold for cash but I imagine that the Salvation Army would never turn away good quality bedding which it could use in its own hostels or even given directly to some of the poor souls sleeping rough on the streets. Then spent a fair bit of the morning going through some past issues of ‘The Times‘ to retain anything of interest before I set out for my scheduled appointment at the dentists in the middle of the day. I have been given two more appointments, one to fix and replace some of my fillings and the other a date with the dental hygienist some time next month. When I got home, although it was late, I cooked myself a ‘meat and two veg’ meal with the ham I had cooked over the weekend.
If Donald Trump does go ahead with his stated aim of acquiring Greenland and adding it to the United States, then of course this is an invasion of a European country by the US as well as an attack on one of the allies in the NATO alliance.In theory, Trump argues that this is to prevent the Russians from taking over the island and one would have thought that the Russians would have been highly offended.But actually the Russians are delighted with the Trump moves and are almost encouraging him on. This is because from the Russian point of view, NATO is being fatally weakened and perhaps even destroyed from within. At the same time, a Trump ‘capture’ of Greenland could be seen as a parallel of the take over of adjacent territory which is what Russia is attempting to do with the Ukraine. Incredible though it may seem, Putin has been invited to be a member of the ‘Peace Board’ to administer the territory of Gaza in the future. Other countries may join the Peace Board if they pay Donald Trump (NOT the US Treasury) 1 $billion from whence the money, or may not, be used in the reconstruction of Gaza.