Harold Wilson, the famous veteran Leader and Prime Minister in the 1960’s, coined the phrase that has stuck ever since and it is ‘ a week can be a long time in politics’ This is as true today as ever and we might add that a day can seem a long time as well. After the Mandelson revelations and his subsequent disgrace, the future of Keir Starmer has appeared to be on a knife edge as the perpetual question arose as to why Mandelson was ever appointed to be British ambassador to the US in the first place. After his Chief of Staff and then Director of Communications resigned yesterday, the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland called upon Starmer to resign. If this was meant to be a ‘coup’ and the calculation was that other prominent figures  would join the call for a resignation, then the coup failed. But we knew that there was a meeting of the Labour Party in the early evening and the mood threatened  to be ugly. But one by one, members of the Cabinet, including the PM’s principal rivals, tweeted their support for Keir Starmer and in the evening meeting with the Parliamentary labour party, Starmer came out fighting for his political life and gave, by all accounts, a barn-storming performance which had the effect of staving off any potential rebellions at least for now. The trouble is that any possible contender has problems  to face – Andy Burnham is not yet in the Commons, Angela Raynor is still embroiled with the Inland Revenue dealing with unresolved tax affairs,  with the Health Secretary Wes Streeting tainted by his close association with the disgraced Peter Mandelson. There is no appetite for an immediate change of leader so the party will limp on until the local elections in May. At these, the Labour party may well be slaughtered at the hands of Nigel Farage and the Reform party so the possible of a change in the Labour leadership may well be delayed for a month or so. An interesting view of the whole fallout from the release of the Epstein files is that it appears that those who are suffering are the ‘good guys’ and not the perpetrators of the sex crimes themselves. In the 3 million files that have been released in the US there have been a whole slew of redactions (i.e. crucial names blacked out) and it appears that the names of those redacted are nearly always the rich and powerful who have a lot to hide whilst the names and details of the victims themselves has sometimes been left slip in the redaction process. It has been calculated in the New York Times that Trump’s name is mentioned some 38,000 times in 5,300 separate files/documents but anything remotely critical is either redacted or else withheld in the 3 million documents that the FBI is refusing to release. So the Epstein Transparency Act passed by Congress is subject to a highly partisan release process. In one case, it looked as though a list of possible fellow collaborators with Epstein was released in error and then immediately withdrawn but some of he American liberal media may have managed to make some screen grabs of this critical FBI list before the document was withdrawn. The volume of material is so great that it is probable that the names of the vast majority of rich and powerful men drawn into the Epstein empire and engaging in sex with underage girls will never be revealed and, of course, they have been protected by the American state itself (at least in the short term)

The morning turned out to be quite an engaging one. For  a start, our domestic help turned up and also my son and daughter-in-law as well. These three had not managed to meet since before Christmas so we all had a rather jolly time whilst we told ourselves what had been going in our respective lives. I popped down into town to pick up a newspaper and get some cash out of an ATM before it was time for my Pilates class. We have been joined by a new class member who has taken the place pf one of long established class mates who has recently moved down to Hampshire to live near her daughter. My trip down to my Pilates class had a rather unusual twist to it. The nearby car park is run by the local authority and their ticket machines accepted payment by card or, in one location, by cash. I always pay my £2 for two hours parking fee by cash because  the card reading option seems complicated and I am regularly stuck in a queue behind people who are trying to work it out. So having put in my coins, they did not seem to properly engage within the machine and when I pressed the ‘Green button’ to issue a ticket, I was given the ‘free’ ticket which is used for a free 30 mins. So it appeared I had lost my money but I consulted the instructions  and pressed a red button which gave me back my coins. After I got my ticket, though, I repeated the cycle but by pressing the red button I finished up with the machine disgorging me five £1 coins over several iterations until evidently that which had been blocking the machine had cleared itself. As I currently  spend anything between £5-£10 a week on car parking charges, since I no longer have Meg’s Blue Badge upon which to rely, I accepted this little free gift with some joy although no doubt other citizens of the town will have been frustrated to have lost money in a mal functioning machine. After  I returned home, I heated up the last remnants of a ‘boeuf a bourbignone’ cooked last weekend and watched some of the Winter Olympics where we are still awaiting a medal of description and have come fourth in a couple of events. The next day I was due to go to hospital for a routine check on my ears but had received a text cancelling the appointment and asking me to wait for a new appointments letter. The original appointment was for the early  afternoon  when trying to find car parking space is extremely difficult so I am hoping that a re-timed appointment slot will be earlier inn the day. Car parking charges are nearly always a nightmare as the last time I went to hospital, the time had just edged into the second hour and hence I was charged £4.00 which seems a lot for a stay of 61 minutes.

So we awoke yesterday to a temperature of 6° which has been the norm for the few days, but needless to say, it was raining again. In case this seems like the longest period of rain that anyone can remember, they would be right unless they were aged about 130. Researchers at the University of Reading recorded 25 straight days of rainfall at the start of the year – the lengthiest unbroken run since records began nearly 120 years ago. I suspected that a shift in the position of the jet stream may have something to do with this persistent spell of rain and my hunch proved to be correct. A southward shift in the jet stream frequently causes persistent rain, particularly in the UK and Europe, by acting as a ‘conveyor belt’ for low-pressure systems. This shift allows wetter, unstable air to travel directly over regions, often causing them to stall and creating prolonged wet, windy conditions. So there we have it but I suppose I have to thank my lucky stars that this did occur when I was pushing Meg up and down the Kidderminster Road in her wheelchair as last year the weather seemed reasonably dry. Sometimes, the Spanish used to experience ‘febrero loco’ or ‘mad February’ in which  towards the end of the month there would be a spell of fine weather associated with  a period of high pressure. As we might imagine on the political front, we are in an era of the Prime Minister trying to restore relationships with this fractured parliamentary party by making suggestions as to how the vetting procedures might be improved. Some may be tempted by the American experience where important positions have to be approved before a special oversight committee. But practically all of the members of the current Trump regime went through public hearings but although some outrageous things were revealed which indicated unsuitability for the post (e.g. the Defence Secretary was a ‘Fox News’ anchor man and had the most limited of low-ranking experience in the army) but the Republicans voted ‘en masse’ to approve of the posts in any case. So even this method of vetting has proved fallible and we shall have to wait and see what changes Keir Starmer is going to suggest. An interesting trial is due to open in a court in Los Angeles, later on in the day. The social media companies are collectively being accused addictive by design, a bit like tobacco and cigarettes were in the 1980s.They will face around 22 ‘bellwether’ lawsuits, i.e. test cases, with lawyers considering the testimonies of more than 1,500 people when launching the action. Of course, the action will not succeed given the power and influence of the social media companies who will deploy the argument that they are just publishing platforms and have no control over the content of what is actually posted on line (apart from rather ineffectual controls which are meant to protect children) I have no doubt that these concerns  are also felt in the UK which is a why a proposal is under consideration for smart-phones to be banned for under 16’s. I have always found it amazing that what is called the Main Street Media staffed by well-trained journalists who are used to check and verify their stories before publication are at best, ignored or at worst, disbelieved. Meanwhile, at least some of the population are of the view hat anything they read on social media is probably  correct and his allows for conspiracy theories and the likes of the anti-vaccination movements to flourish. Apart from sustained efforts by schools and parents to address this problem (which many do not) the tech companies will be always be one step ahead and this is even before we start to unleash the impact of artificial  intelligence (AI) models. When I used to both research and to lecture on quality management issues, I was often frustrated to find that a group mind-set tended to dominate the algorithms used by the search companies such as Google.  So in response to a search query such as ‘What are the arguments against Total Quality Management’ I would get responses such as ‘The arguments against Total utility  management are misplaced due to …’  but I do concede that a similar  query today gives a somewhat more nuanced response (perhaps under the impact of AI itself).

Yesterday was an unpredictable sort of day. I needed to get some items in the post today which I did as a matter of priority and then I went off to visit my dentist, not to receive a course of treatment but to query the cost of the treatments I received last Thursday. My son and I talked over the cost of the treatment I had received last Thursday which was basically one filling which required sone drilling and then what one might one call a renovation of some older fillings that required some attention but not replacement. My son and I consulted  the internet to discover that there are three payment bands ranging from simple inspections to more complex interventions such as crowns and dentures for NHS dental work Basically, as the charges seemed so high I suspected that I had been charged at the Band 3 rate rather than the Band 2 rate and I telephoned them on Thursday afternoon to initiate a query but with the response that the dentist would be consulted and then they would get to me (which they did not) So today I turned up at the dentist with some NHS documentation explaining that I thought  I may have been inadvertently overcharged and they agreed immediately giving me a refund of 75% of the bill. In other words I had been charged four times as much I should have been and so a refund was charged back onto my card. I am going to wait until later in the evening to check  whether the refund has found its way back into my account where it is sorely needed to pay my central heating servicing bill. Finally, the domestic political news has been pretty remarkable today insofar as Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff resigned yesterday, his principal Communications Director resigned this morning and the Scottish Labour Leader, Anas Sarwar has publicly called for Keir Starmer to step down. Starmer is due to address the Parliamentary Labour party in the evening and the mood within the party may well determine whether the prime minister is forced out or lives to fight another day.

I had asked my son, who has always been a keen photographer, to consult his digital collection of photographs to see if any of the pre-digital era family photographs had been scanned and had found its way into his collection. He did unearth four, two of which were seaside snaps and can be dated and were probably taken on a beach in the Gower peninsular, South Wales when we visited  Meg’s cousin for a family holiday. But I was interested in one of Meg and myself atop a mountain and the question arises whether we could apply our collective memories to ascertain which  mountain it was and a possible date. Putting our heads together, we have concluded that it could be Snowdon, Wales’s highest mountain and was evidently taken in mid-summer. I think we can discern in the background Lyn Glaslyn, the most prominent, high-altitude lake (Blue Lake) situated directly below the summit and apparently, according to the internet, now a favourite for wild water swimming. This particular lake sticks in my memory because my son and  actually swum in it. The full story is that we ran into a couple  of young German girls with whom we ascended Snowdon in one direction and we decided to stick together as walking companions on another route down the mountain. On the day in question, it was an incredibly hot day and when the German girls espied the lake they exclaimed that it would be a good idea if we all went for a swim (which was probably incredibly dangerous given how cold the water was) We explained that we did have our swimming trunks with us but the young German girls exclaimed that we should not bother with that and promptly completely stripped off and ran into the lake. My son and I felt obliged to follow their example but I know that Meg declined the offer and we certainly did not stay too long in the water as it seemed freezing cold. But to return to the family photograph, we think we can date it to the late 1970’s because of our hair styles and I have a bandage on my left knee. I had been involved in a bizarre accident on the Leicester Polytechnic campus in 1973 when a runaway car, whose driver had fainted, ran me over smashing up both of my knees and taking two of my students on its bonnet through some iron railings. Although I made a pretty full recovery, my left knee occasionally caused me some discomfort as it still does to this day so the bandaged left knee helps to date the photograph. But now I am not so sure as I search the internet for images of the cairns which are the trig points for both Hellvelln and Snowdon and our photograph matches neither. Although we have a lot of photographs still to be unearthed in our final assault on a ‘hobbit hole’, the vast majority of these are likely to show Meg and myself plus son in deep snow and dressed in cagoules and anoraks taken at Easter time which is the time of the year when we typically used to take a holiday in the Lakes. Easter was our preferred time because it was always so crowded during the summer months but it will be interesting to see what we manage to discover. Once this is done we will scan them in using our scanner which has always done a good job in the past and I will ensure that I always crop then to the same dimensions so that they can easily be displayed in the software (HTML code) that I was using very recently.

I decided yesterday morning, almost on the spur of the moment, although the thought has been in my head for some time, to attend the service at my local church for 8.30 on Sunday morning service rather than the service at 6.00pm on Saturday evenings. This turned out to be quite an inspired decision because I knew several of the congregation by sight and, as a bonus, at the end of the service they had opened the parish hall where those who wished to could assemble for a chat over a cup of coffee. I got into conversation with a man who was not only a keen walker but also very knowledgeable about American politics so we shared views with each other about the American body politic. I also got into a conversation with a young mother who was occupying the pew in front of me nursing her very well behaved seven month old baby so we thought we would probably carry on chatting next week. So I have decided to undertake a switch from the Saturday evening to the Sunday morning service if only on a Saturday driving to the church in the driving rain and then shooting in and out of the church in the dark means that here is no time to socialise. So given that my reasons for attending church are as much social as they are theological, I think that a switch of times will prove to be very beneficial for me. After I had returned home, my son called around as he indicated that he would and we discussed things like family finances with each other which was very useful. For the rest of the day whilst we have the Winter Olympics to occupy us, I actually prefer something a little more mind engaging. Yesterday evening there was a film about the life of Emily Brontē of which I only have scantiest knowledge so I suspect that this is one of the transmissions where I can be wrapped up in a warm bed and view it on the bedroom TV.

The political news that emerged during the day was the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Tt is true that many of the Labour Party backbenchers had been calling for his head and McSweeney himself takes full responsibility for advising the choice of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. That having been said, the mood the House of Commons as a whole was that there needed to be scapegoat and it is probable that McSweeny went before he was actually pushed as even Keir Starmer appreciated . And whilst constitutional niceties still remain, it is the Prime Minister’s responsibility  to take what advice is offered but then not only to act decisively but to take responsibility for decisions, even they turn out to be wrong, or at least misplaced. No doubt this resignation will be discussed deep into the night but it may be a case of ‘too little, too late’ to save the fate of Prime Minister.

You might have thought that given the outpourings from the White House, the material could not sink to such low depths but what has happened in the last day takes ones breath away. A video has been posted depicting the ex-President Obama and has wife as apes and the video stayed current for some twelve hours before it was taken down as a ‘mistake’ The explanation given is that the White House was trying to portray politicians as animals from Disney cartoons with Trump naturally being the ‘king of the jungle’ whereas the Obamas were designated as apes at the end of the clip. Initially the clip was defended by the White House and only when there was complete uproar across the political spectrum including one black American senator was the clip taken down. When Trump was questioned about this, he said he had seen the earlier part of the clip and approved it but conveniently not the later sections including the racist taunt but does one believe anything that Trump says? Before the post was removed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended it and said the depiction formed part of a longer video depicting various politicians as animals saying that this is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. She pleaded that the fake outrage be stopped  and that the White House should report on something today that actually matters to the American public. Trump himself acknowledges that a mistake has been made but blames it all on an over-enthusiastic White House staffer and had refused to apologise for the content if the clip. Mr Trump has a long history of attacking Mr Obama, his predecessor as president, and was a vocal proponent of the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory. The theory cast doubt on Mr Obama’s birth in Hawaii, asserting that he was actually born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to hold the office of president. Mr Obama produced his long-form birth certificate in 2011. In 2016, Mr Trump publicly accepted that his predecessor was born in the US. I personally have only once seen something as completely offensive as this. Early in my career as a teacher of sociology, I taught some ‘Race Relations’ and put on a series of voluntary videos on race and world religions which were shown at lunchtimes. These were completely voluntary but the students flocked to them and the students  enthusiastic response to my efforts actually forced a change in college policy and I was happy to explain my actions before a special meeting of the Academic Board of the college of education in which I worked. I do remember, though, that  one white member of the Board thought that my efforts were totally unnecessary because the only ethnic minorities that her students would ever meet in small English rural towns were members pf the gypsy and travelling community ( and ‘they were white in any case’) But as part of my researches, I did discover some examples of racist literature attempting to draw comparisons between black people and apes by drawings of caricatures side by side attempting to discern similarities between the two (I did not show any of this material in my own courses) naturally both I and the world have moved on in the last half century, one would have hoped. Meanwhile, I watched some of the opening of the Winter Olympics last night broadcast from Cortina in Italy but the Winer Olympics does not grab my attention as much as their summer counterparts. But I have to say that, like others, I do enjoy the opportunity to watch sports such as curling and the British team (largely Scots I would think) have got off to a flying start by winning each of their first five matches.

I took the opportunity whilst I was on the road this morning to call again at the house of the disabled person whose wallet I managed to restore to him the other day. In my desire to find the identity of the owner I had taken out a membership card to an organisation that catered for disabled people hoping that by this route I could find an address. So I had inadvertently left the card out by the side of my computer so I wrote a little note explaining why I had taken it out of the wallet in the first place. The wife of the disabled person was delighted to see me again and to receive back the precious card so I now feel my task of returning the wallet and its contents is completed. In the afternoon, we witnessed the Wales vs. England rugby match and it is true to say that this rather mirrored the rugby on France vs. Ireland the previous evening where France predominated. At half time England were leading 22:0 but the Welsh did not help themselves by acquiring two yellow cards (and hence down to 13 men) within a minute o so of each other. Cards are issues following an infringement of the rules and these might be either a cynical disregard for the rules or a burst of over-enthusiasm leading to an infringement.  Welsh rugby has been going through  a lean period for the last few yeas and perhaps a defeat was of no real surprise. The English team were good but against such inferior opposition it was a little hard to judge how effective they eventually turned out to be. The next match is against Scotland for the Calcutta Cup next weekend but Scotland were beaten by Italy so that team might not prove to be any stern opposition to the English  pack. I actually missed going to church in the evening as I was rather taken over watching the rugby match and we also have the Winter Olympics in Italy which takes up most of the scheduled broadcast for most of the evening. So far the British team are doing well at curling and there are always a host of other sports with lots of thrills and spills to absorb the attention. n terms of domestic political news, the Mandelson affair will continue to dominate the Sunday newspapers and no doubt the political programmes in the morning. The latest focus of attention is the amount of an enormous pay-off given to Mandelson at the point where he was sacked as the British ambassador to the US and any amount awarded to him suddenly seems massively inappropriate.

Yesterday was the opening night of the Six Nations international rugby competition to which I always look forward and we were treated to France vs. Ireland on a rainy night in Paris. The French were superb with fast-flowing  and quick-running rugby and overwhelmed the Irish in the first half and were actually three tries up and 22:0 at half time. So it looked like a very one sided contest but then the Irish came back strongly in the second half and scored a couple of tries and nearly a third but were actually no match for the French on the night. We now look forward to the England vs Wales match on Saturday but this starts quite late at about 5.00pm I believe so may cause a clash with my church-going routine. Last night saw an innovation at which the heart actually sinks and this is ‘in match’ adverts which is an innovation which I am sure was more or less inevitable but we all wanted to postpone the evil day. Actually, I have to say it was done reasonably well but this first experiment was being monitored by all kinds of bodies. Only one advert was shown and there was a split screen with both the advert and the match being visible although the sound priority was given to the advert. The advert was timed to appear during so called ‘dead’ time during the match when the scrum was being set or if anyone was receiving medical attention. But although the advertisers would see last night’s experiment as a success, it is undoubtedly the thin edge of the wedge and it is possible  to envisage this technique being deployed on all types of commercial TV transmissions within quite a short space of time.

The hold of the Prime Minister on power looks increasingly tenuous and some real words of wisdom are being spoken by the Labour peer Harriet Harman who was at one stage deputy leader of the Labour Party and who I would  have liked, personally, to have seen as leader. In conversation with Sky’s Beth Rigby, these are her thoughts The Labour peer told the political editor Beth Rigby: ‘I think it is so serious for Keir Starmer. I do not think it is inevitable that it will bring him down. But it will bring him down – unless he takes the action, which is really necessary for him to take, and that is this: firstly, he has got to stop blaming Mandelson and saying that he lied to me Because actually he should never have been considering him in the first place. To say he lied to me makes it look weak and naive and gullible. So it is just completely the wrong thing. He should be reflecting on why he made that appointment, not angry at the evilness of Peter Mandelson. He should also be thinking about a real reset in Number 10, because what you need from your team in Number 10, is people who share your values and your principles and who will help you be the best prime minister you can be, according to your true self. Clearly, that is not what happened because the Keir Starmer, who was DPP [director of public prosecutions], would never have appointed somebody like Peter Mandelson to represent the country.’ These are very sensible comments and do show Starmer a way forward. Probably one of the most important things that can be done is to appoint a Chief of Staff (principal adviser) who is very much in tune with the attitudes and the values of the rank and file of the parliamentary party and not seen as remote and aloof.  After a few days and some changes of staff and advisers, it is possible that Starmer can limp on at least for the time being and whilst there is no very evident successor in sight.

No sooner had I got myself up and showered and was coming down the stairs when the central heating engineer came to have a look at my boiler. This young man is absolutely excellent and has excellent diagnostic skills and we had previously supplied him with the make and model number of our boiler should  he need to order any parts in advance. As the water level and pressure seemed to drop when it should not, he had suspected a faulty valve so had brought the relevant spare with him and after half an hour he left with the boiler hopefully restored to good health – but we shall have to see over the next day or so. I made a trip to my usual supermarket to pick up one or two things for tonight’s meal and then made my way to a car park from which I journey out to see my friends/acquaintances in one of the local charity shops where I am regaled with a coffee and a slice of homemade cake. Whenever it is raining, which is was yesterday, the car parks always seem exceptionally busy and it took a fair bit of loitering before  a space was released. Then  I collected  my newspaper with a similar long wait for a car parking space. After I returned home, I cooked a fair quantity of mushrooms which I had on some toasted sourdough bread and then watched some of the liberal American media on YouTube, analysing the latest release of the 3 million papers released last Friday. One particular contribution by an independent  journalist was quite illuminating.  She had investigated Epstein’s background in some detail and tried to wok out how as a college dropout who was teaching maths in an academy acquired the positions of influence and wealth that he did. Quite a convincing case was made of the connections between Epstein, and Ghislaine’s father  Robert Maxwell who had intimate connections with MOSSAD (The Israeli intelligence service) as well as the American intelligence services (in all probability) Is it just coincidence that Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein both died  as a result of ‘suicide’ but in highly contentious circumstances and the very light sentence accorded to Epstein himself and the translocation of Ghislaine Maxwell to the least arduous type of prison regime also require some explanation. After this viewing, I popped  outside  to close the back door gate which had been open to grant access to the central heating engineer. But the bolt securing the gate would not fasten correctly which sometimes happens when gates drop a fraction and/or wooden frames swell. So I needed to unscrew and then relocate the bolt retainer about 1/4″ upwards which did the trick perfectly. Although this sounds a simple job, in fact all went well but sometimes even simple jobs have complications.

Yesterday was one of the most momentous days in British politics since the Profumo crisis in 1963, more than sixty years ago, when Profumo was caught lying to the House of Commons over his affair with Christine Keeler, a mistress shared with a Russian attaché, and which occasioned him resigning in disgrace. This is all of the sequelae to the Mandelson affair where it has become apparent that Mandelson, whilst in the Cabinet, shared state secrets with the disgraced paedophile Jeffry Epstein. Keir Starmer promised a full explanation to the House of Commons how Mandelson ever came to be appointed to be the British ambassador to the USA in the first place. I now rely upon the excellent summary provided by Beth Rigby in Sky News because her summary of events is masterful. There’s no understating it – the Mandelson scandal has become into a full-blown political crisis for the government, with the prime minister once again in a precarious position. Anger among Labour MPs is palpable. They are angry over Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US – despite admitting yesterday he was aware of Lord Mandelson’s ongoing association with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. But Labour backbenchers are also furious at the government’s attempt to prevent some files being released on national security grounds – as well as files that might embarrass its relationship with the White House. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused the prime minister of a ‘cover up’. As yesterday afternoon wore on, it became clear that it was not going to wash with Labour MPs – and in a climbdown for the government, a compromise was broken, with files referred to parliament’s independent Intelligence and Security Committee, who will decide which files to redact. It was the PM’s own former deputy, Angela Rayner, who led the calls for this change. And some other files will be delayed, after the police asked the government not to release anything that could prejudice their investigation into Lord Mandelson. The absolute root of the problem is the whole question of political judgement and that is fuelling calls for Keir Starmer to be replaced – it is already being said that he is ‘toast’ and many feel his days are numbered. Although the political dictum is that ‘advisers advise but ministers decide’ it is undoubtedly the case that Starmer did not heed the warnings that Mandelson might prove to be a troublesome choice as ambassador – after all, he had been sacked twice before from Labour cabinets but no doubt felt that he could bounce back from any adversity. But on this occasion, his disgrace is so absolute that he will become a non-person, politically. So as well as what turns out to be appalling judgement in appointing Mandelson in the first place, under intense and quite forensic questioning by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, Starmer was forced to eventually admit that he knew of the association of Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein even after the latter was shown to be a convicted paedophile. Upon this admission, there was an audible gasp from the back bench Labour MPs who deserted their PM almost to a man and the government was forced by back bench pressure to abandon an amendment which meant that some information would not be supplied to the whole House of Commons on security grounds. Instead the House of Commons insisted that a full disclosure should be made but sensitive security information only given to the Intelligence and Security Committee and not the whole House. The whole point here is that once a Prime Minister has lost trust n such na spectacular scale, it is very hard to regain it. By jetting off around the world, Keir Starmer may have built up credit with other world leaders but he has neglected his own back yard to his peril (and, incidentally, this can happen when one’s majority is too large)

The weather yesterday was blustery with freezing rain and altogether unpleasant to be out. The principal appointment I had in the middle of the day was a dental appointment where one filling needed to be replaced (as it had dropped out) and a further two renovated in some way. But I was so shocked at what I was charged that I feel impelled to call the dentist to see if I have charged the correct price or not. The actual quality of the treatment received has been excellent and, as the years have progressed, I feel that the anaesthetics involved have improved dramatically. One used to be left with a numb one half of the mouth for several hours and then normal sensation gradually returned but nowadays the actual side effects appear to be minimal. I have been instructed to only eat out of one side of my mouth for the next day which is understandable as amalgams have to gradually harden but today that was quite easy to arrange as I lunched on sone quiche with a stir-fry mix of onions, peppers, tomatoes and  mushrooms which was quite a sloppy consistency and did not require any real chewing.

Viewing of the newscasts this afternoon  confirms that the fate of Keir Starmer lies in the balance. The opposition parties evidently relish in their attacks on a ‘wounded’ prime minister but it might be the case that sheer Machiavellian politics takes over and the opposition parties might privately wish for a wounded and disabled prime minister to remain in place as a more beatable opponent in the May elections – and the general election which is still years off.  Even the deeply unhappy Labour MPs have no real desire or stomach for a leadership contest at this particular time so it might be that Keir Starmer limps on as a diminished figure with no real authority over his troops any more until such time as the parliamentary party thinks he needs to be replaced as party leader. I am always conscious of the famous remark attributed to one of Napoleon’s generals who was questioned about loyalty to his leader. His reply was to the effect that ‘I will be loyal to my Leader to the end – until the time is ripe for treachery’ and the same sentiment is probably abroad in the current Labour Party where the mood is said to be like a tinderbox and a rebellion on almost any issue quite likely.

Yesterday, I awoke to a dark, gloomy and rainy day with the temperature only at 2° and not predicted to rise much to about 9° later in the day when we may have a little sunshine after lunch. The weather reminds one of the old country description of February as ‘February fill dyke’ as it was the month in which there was a lot of precipitation of either rain or snow. In either case, the ditches were filled with plenty of water which country people realised was helpful to get the ground in good condition for the sowing season. In my gardening days, I think that parsnips could actually be sown in February but they have a long germination period and I think I used to soak them for 24 hours before sowing the seeds in clumps of about 4. I have particular memories in the days when we used to have a very long garden devoted to a lot of vegetables that I used to keep parsnips in the ground until Christmas day. If there had been a frost, then the cold had converted the natural starches into sugar and gave parsnips a wonderful sweet taste and before today, I have actually prised them out of the ground so that they were ready to cook for the forthcoming Christmas day. They could often grow to a foot in length as I remember but the parsnips that you buy in the shops today tend to be short and stubby. Meanwhile, the long shadow of Epstein dominates the political landscape and the news this morning is that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has moved out of Royal Lodge under the cover of darkness to avoid unwelcome publicity whilst the police are seriously considering and assessing the case against Peter Mandelson for  criminal prosecution for having alerted his ‘friend’ Epstein of forthcoming cabinet moves to combat the then growing financial crisis, behaviour which some might almost describe as treasonous. The day did not hold much in store but may well turn out to be a very ‘domestic’ day as my son and I continue with our cleaning out of the ‘hobbit holes’ and shopping beckons later on in the afternoon. There is some speculation in the trans-Atlantic press that Donald Trump realises that he may well lose both mid-term and end-of-term elections so is positioning the Republican party to de facto ‘steal’ of the next election. Already some Republican states have acceded to White House demands to hand over voter registration lists and the strategy seems to be that if they find a single case of fraud in the Democratic vote then the whole election might be deemed invalid and handed to the Republicans. All of this violates the US Constitution, of course, but the Republicans will stop at nothing to seize and then to retain political power wherever they can exert the slightest degree of leverage and one fears for the worst. Court rulings against the Republicans can be appealed against over and over again until a case reaches the Supreme Court which is stuffed full of Trump nominees and typically (but not absolutely always) complies with the Trump agenda.

When my son and I cleared out the third of our ‘hobbit holes’ (giving access to storage space in the eaves of the house), it became a voyage of discovery. When I was busy in the ‘conference attending’ part of my academic career which was generally to read (and have published ) papers which formed the basis pf my PhD, the conference organisers would give you a little brief-case size canvas bag with various useful things inside such as the schedule of events if there were a variety of presentations offered at the same time. I always accepted such bags (as did everybody else) but when I retuned home, I junked most of the contents, filed away the useful bits I wanted to retain and kept bag itself which had only had a few days use. Well my son and I stopped counting when we go to fourteen and even this excludes some of the leatherette briefcases. Another real ‘find’ was a case which contained various items relating both to my employment and leisure activities before I attended university having left school at the age of 16 and therefore not attending a sixth form) For example, I found the letter of appointment when I joined the scientific civil service at a salary of about £368.00 pa and there are probably other documents which I am loathe to discard. A third general  category of items could well  be donated to a museum of computing because I had a whole volume of 3.5″ floppy disks (and there ma even have been some 5.25″ floppies as well) Some of these are the final versions of the software that I wrote and which got sold off as an adjunct to some  statistical books and it could well be that the floppies contain my original source code (written in Turbo Pascal) There were also several boxes of slides which I used to take along to various conferences as the conferences in those days always had a slide protector but not necessarily a computer as we are talking about pre-Power Point days. So these materials have left in a pile on my landing and will await a time when I can go through them item by item and decide whether to ultimately retain or discard.

After I had made myself a quick ‘fish-on-bread’ style of lunch, I did my weekly shopping which was augmented by the ingredients for a meal I am going to prepare over the weekend. A combination of clearing out activities in the morning, shopping in the afternoon and then a trawl through some of the remaining newspapers before our green bins (= paper based items for disposal) get collected first thing in the morning has left me feeling quite tired at the end of the day. I may have an early night tonight as I have the excitement of a dental appointment tomorrow but at least there is the Rugby to which  to look forward in the early evening. The first encounter of a new series is always very interesting because teams typically have the opportunity to promote some players and to retire others who have come to the end of their careers. On addition, coaches have always been working on revisions of both strategy and tactics during the ‘close’ season and this first game is the first opportunity to see to see how this planning works out in practice.

The pretty grim domestic news that broke yesterday was some of the continuing fallout from the release of the Epstein documents by the FBI in the United States. Peter (Lord) Mandelson is already shown in some strange photographs (eg in his underpants with a woman) and seems to have been the recipient of up to $75,000 from the disgraced paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein but more was to be revealed. Sir Keir Starmer is set to chair a cabinet meeting today as police assess allegations his former US ambassador Lord Mandelson leaked sensitive information from the heart of government to Jeffrey Epstein. The Met are investigating allegations of misconduct in public office after emails appeared to show conversations between the ex-cabinet minister and paedophile financier about political matters, while the former was business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government in 2009. The messages were about plans to tax the bonus of ‘top’ bankers so here we have the release of sensitive political information from which others could benefit financially. The messages were revealed as part of the latest tranche of Epstein files released by the US Justice Department. Ella Marriott, Commander of the Met, said they would be reviewed to determine if they meet the criminal threshold for investigation. It had always been well known that Mandelson was always seeking out the company of the rich and famous and had been sacked from at least two Labour governments beforehand. So, there were some in the Labour Party who always distrusted him and the shock and horror exhibited by former colleagues was manifest in media interviews during the evening. Mandelson would never dare show his face in the House of Lords and probably intends to be a ‘sleeping’ one. But although Keir Starmer would like Mandelson to resign from the House of Lords and even has his peerage removed, the latter is complex and may even require an Act of Parliament. Under the 2014 House of Lords Reform Act, Mandelson could resign from the Lords and relinquish his peerage. But this would not strip him of the title – he would still be free to call himself Lord Peter Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool. There is another way he could go quietly without resigning. His current leave of absence from the Lords lasts until the end of the parliamentary session in May. He is no longer US ambassador, the reason for his absence, so he needs to come back and retake the oath in the Lords in the next session. If he does not do so by the end of that next session, his membership automatically lapses. But again, he would keep the title. No doubt, when there are next reforms to the House of Lords, the procedures for expelling an errant peer will be revised and brought up-to-date but the procedure as it stands at the moment is not a straight forward one. Nor is the scandal confined to Peter Mandelson as yesterday ‘The Times‘ published a photograph of Epstein which appeared to show him grappling with or at least attempting to kiss a girl lying on a sofa and one of Epstein’s hands appears from my reading of the photo trying to insert itself into her clothing which is compromising in the extreme (but strangely this damning photo does not appear elsewhere in the media despite its publication the day before in ‘The Times’)

I spent a certain amount  of time catching up on the news from our domestic help and then treated myself to a rather belated breakfast of porridge. Then after being immersed in some of the daily news, I ventured into town to brave the biting cold wind and the rain carried with it to pick up a copy of my newspaper. I got some money out of the ATM in anticipation of the weekly shopping to be done tomorrow and then looked around my local ‘Poundland’ but did not manage to find the things for which I was looking and so I drove home in order to prepare for Pilates. I was particularly glad to get home afterwards as the weather is so unpleasant and so raided my freezer  and found some spare curry which just needed a heating up in the microwave. After a nap I the afternoon, I caught up with the news of the day  which was Peter Mandelson had anticipated that he was shortly to be thrown out of the House of Lords and accordingly had resigned  his membership of the upper chamber even as Keir Starmer and the Labour cabinet were preparing legislation to terminate his membership had he not quit of his own accord.  Now the only remaining question in Mandelson’s spectacular fall from grace is the question of how and whether he is stripped of his peerage. I think the sense of outrage is so strong in our political classes that it is quite possible that a one clause bill could be quickly passed through Parliament to actually put this into effect. It is now almost certain that the Metrooilitan police are considering whether actual crimes have been committed and the one piece of legislation that is being used is probably ‘Misconduct in Public Office’ which describes pretty well what has been going on. The only possible line of defence that Mandelson could deploy is to argue that the FBI evidence is all ‘faked’ but presumably it is possible to resurrect Bank Archives in a case s serious as this to prove the authenticity of the FBI data dump. But whilst so much attention is being paid on this side of the Atlantic, on the other side there is also a search for the ‘smoking gun’ which might directly  implicate Donald Trump. But whilst a ‘smoking gun’ may well exist, it is certain that the Trump regime will fight tooth and nail to ensure that this never sees the light of day and when Trump finally falls, it may well be that critical files have been completely deleted by the FBI or have mysteriously gone missing. In a regime so ideologically committed as the present Trump regime, it is almost inconceivable that the power centres that be will stop at nothing to protect Donald Trump from having to leave office in disgrace or to face gaol and so justice may never actually done. In the evening I had a couple of episodes of ‘Yes,Prime Minister’ to which to look forward and there is also a biography of the life of Mozart which suggested itself on YouTube to complete my evening’s viewing. 

The breaking news overnight was the resignation from the Labour party of Lord Mandelson in order to ‘save further embarrassment’ In truth, he probably jumped before he was pushed because the latest news, quite apart from the infamous photograph of him crouching over the prone body of a young woman. Bank account transfers are published which show that Mandelson was given $75,000 (about £55,000) by Epstein but for what we know what, apart from the fact that Mandelson was lobbying the Treasury to reduce the top rates of tax levied on bankers. Mandelson denies ever having received the payments, in effect trying to argue that the bank statements were ‘fakes’ but this seems the thinnest of excuses and the Labour party would probably have expelled him forthwith in any case. The evening before yesterday was spent quietly going through a pile of old newspapers to retain significant press-cuttings and I am also re-purposing an old but empty diary-com-day-book by tippex-ing out the out-of-sequence dates so that days/dates align with 2026. Also, I have just been shown how to make a ‘to do’ list for oneself using WhatsApp in a particular way so I will see if I can put this into effect later on in the day. More disturbing news emerged this morning about what you might call ‘sinking’ Britain. The rates for the incidence of measles is soaring and the UK has lost its WHO listing as a country where measles has been all but eliminated. This puts us alongside Austria, Spain and some Eastern European  countries such as Uzbekistan. This is important for the UK because vaccination rates have been dropping slowly for years. By September 2025, only 84.3 per cent of children aged five had received both doses of the MMR jab, far below the target of 95 per cent. Because measles is so infectious, doctors often refer to it as a canary in the coal mine for low vaccination rates. It seems as though vaccination rates were declining even before COVID hit us which added a further twist to the downward spiral. Most worrying and not surprisingly, vaccination rates are dropping most in the most deprived areas – and Birmingham is quite badly affected with a rate of only 75.5% of children having received the MMR before their fifth birthday and this is way below the recommended rate of 95% This week has no particular appointments to bear in mind apart from the fact that I have a dental appointment on Thursday and a boiler service on Friday which is hardly earth-shattering. On the other hand, the ‘Six Nations’ rugby season opens on Thursday so this is a treat to which I can look forward. One little thought that I came across recently is this little pearl of wisdom ‘Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.’ We can be our own harshest critics but on the other hand there is such a thing as self-delusion where we try to convince ourselves that we are better than we are at doing particular things. At this time of year, the newspapers are full of advice how to turn one’s life around and these usually focus on diet/exercise. I remember with a wry smile seeing in my local Aldi where they stock up on exercise-related merchandise in January a tea-shirt which read ‘Remember that exercise is not just for January’ which does make one ponder how many good intentions have fallen by the wayside within a month of the start of the year.

The rest of the day developed in an interesting but not unexpected direction. My Droitwich friend phoned me to tell me that after she had dropped her sons off to school she found in the wet and the mud a man’s wallet. Although the contents were absolutely sodden. my friend managed to discern what she thought was a current address and wondered if I could make a trip round to the street, which about a mile away, to tell them that the wallet had been found. We thought the house number was 95a but in the chosen street, the house numbers only went up to 47 so I tried 15a (with no success) and then 5 (with no success), a postman and then a neighbour who lived in the  street for ages all without success. When I got home, I phoned 101 (the non emergency contact number for the police) who were not very helpful, suggesting I travel to Worcester some 15 miles away where, if the wallet was unclaimed, they would keep it and then destroy it after 3 months. When I enquired about a more local police station, I was informed that there was one next to the fire station but there was a grey door near to the fire station for the use of the police but no counter service – however, it was possible that a policeman might speak to me if I wanted to hand in a lost wallet. I am amazed that a town the size of Bromsgrove is so under-policed but there we are. But my friend called around in the late afternoon and after I minutely examined the contents we managed to find a more current address and my friend and I delivered it back to its owner. The owner was disabled (blind) but his wife was so relieved and burst into tears of joy. We were so pleased to get it back not the hands of the owner but there were evidently irreplaceable family photos, a driving licence and a variety of cards that might have been almost impossible to replace. Then my friend and I went shopping in Asda for her son’s birthday party and we bought some high quality sausages as a special treat as well as chocolates and cards for the lucky son whose birthday it was. In the evening, I was invited to make up the numbers at a little impromptu birthday party for one of the sons of my friend. We had a jolly time, eating some of the really high quality sausages we had just purchased in the afternoon, indulged in birthday cake and finally opened cards and presents. It was actually an enjoyable experience for the four of us and the fact that my friend and I had successfully restored the lost wallet to its rightful owner filled both of us with a great deal of satisfaction – and something to celebrate as well.

It is so nice to have the month of January behind us and to be at last in the month of February. Certain dates stick in the mind and one of them is 2nd February which is traditionally known as ‘Candlemas’ This used to be regarded as the very last day of the Christmas cycle although  I think a lot of the traditions associated with this Christian feast day are not now observed. On this day, candles used both in the church and also domestically were blessed and, of course, they symbolise life being brought into the world. One of the traditions that may survive until today is in Hungary where children dress up as bears, eat honey and generally celebrate the glimmerings of the end of winter. Knowing that yesterday was going to be a busier day than normal socially, I tried going to bed a little earlier but woke up again after an hour or so (and then got up and toddled about a bit) so the idea of getting an early night did not quite work out. Later on in the morning, I am due to go round to have a coffee with a parishioner who used to call round regularly and give spiritual comfort to Meg when she was alive but has now been ill herself. Although I will get the news later on, she appears to be responding to treatment and on the mend which is very heartening. In the afternoon, my son is due to call around as well and I am pleased that we can put the final arrangements in place before we go off to Worcester at the end of the month to arrange for the final stub of my mortgage to be redeemed. I attended the church service late on Saturday evening and ran into an incredibly cheerful lady who hails from Liverpool and who always manages to be in an irrepressible good humour although she has been diagnosed as suffering from leukaemia. Also sitting behind me in the pews was the Treasurer of the church committee on which I used to serve and our meeting was quite fortuitous. This is because the Church used to have a system  of envelopes in which to make donations to the church split between first and second collections and used in slightly different ways. I used to have a standing order for the first of these collections and make a weekly donation in money for the second but these old arrangements are being swept away and replaced by enhanced digital methods of making donations. As well as relieving one of the weekly chore of always remembering one’s collection money, the digital collection does ensure that the church can reclaim the tax that has been paid upon it and this has the effect of increasing the donation by 20%. My donations have all been a little awry since my finances were in a certain  degree of turmoil following Meg’s death but now everything has settled down a bit, I am in a better position to regularise my donation method. As you might imagine, practically every front page of the Sunday newspapers has been dominated by that ‘infamous’ photograph of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (ex Price Andrew) crouching on all fours over the body of a prostrate girl and whilst there is no caption, date, or context supplied for the photograph it looks both unusual and damning at the same time. There is a renewed call for Andrew to be stripped of his peerage and the Government are urging him to return to the USA to answer questions about his affiliations with Epstein but this is not going to happen.  The US Department of Justice has released only 3 million of the 6 million pages of material associated with the Epstein affair but they say that they are complying with the law passed by Congress to hand over all material. They were allowed to redact the name victims in order to protect their identity but the actual practice has been partisan in the extreme because the names most commonly redacted are the rich and powerful perpetrators of the sex acts performed with underage girls (including Donald Trump) Meanwhile, as was demonstrated in one video released yesterday, we have the bizarre appearance of a page of allegations in which the whole of it has been redacted including the name of the victim although according to the letter of the law, the actual details of the allegations should be made public and not redacted. There is still a lot more to be revealed by an examination of the 3 million pages of evidence that have been released and one suspects that the most damning of material has probably been retained. There is such a mountain of evidence and therefore ‘smoke’ that surely there must be an underlying ‘fire’ but as it America’s rich and famous that are implicated not confined to Donald Trump, one wonders if this material will ever see the light of day. Needless to say, because of the ‘Statute of Limitations’ (usually five years) none of the rich and powerful perpetrators will ever be prosecuted apart from Epstein and Maxwell (and Epstein committed suicide, or was murdered in jail)

After watching the Lorna Kuennsberg programme on BBC1, I made my way down the hill to pick up my copy of the Sunday newspaper and a little something to take along with me when I visited my friends for coffee. As both of my friends are very keen and competent musicians, we spent most of our time chatting about things  musical both locally and also in terms of what we had seen both in the locality and also on TV. Both of my friends were just returning from their walk when  I arrived and evidently they are doing this to keep themselves in good shape and I am hopeful that they can both give me a return visit as soon as the latest tranche of treatment is successfully completed. My friend had read a reference to the town of Salobreña in this blog where Meg and I often stayed as clients of Saga and they themselves had visited the hotel and swum in the hotel’s pool so we exchanged some happy memories of the hotel. I have on my computer a folder of two years of holiday  snaps taken in and around Salobreña  so when my friends call around this will be interesting viewing for us all. I got home and my son had just arrived for a weekend visit so we chatted for over an hour after which I went ahead and cooked myself a conventional ‘meat and two veg’ type of meal. The rest of the day is probably going to taken up with going through a pile of recent newspapers to extract articles of interest. Looking at my local ‘rag’ I was appalled to discover that Bromsgrove’s target for housing developments had been increased by 85% whereas nearby Birmingham, with a lot of acreage of available brown land, had been decreased by 31%. I am only too aware that building is going on all absolutely all around my house at the moment but I suspect that central government has responded to pressure from big building firms because whether it was Green Belt or not, the building is taking place on what used to be flat and easy-to-develop farming land (in the past populated by rabbits, pheasants and sometimes badgers).