This morning was a fairly typical Sunday morning for us as Meg and I got up and then breakfasted in front of the TV watching the Sunday morning TV programmes. It is evident that the TV studios are very close to each other because the same government spokesman seem to appear on the Sky News programme at 8.30 and then immediately pop up on the Lorna Kuennsberg programme half an hour later giving identical answers to what appears to be identical questions. We found nothing remarkable of note this morning so got ourselves ready to go down to Waitrose where we had made an arrangement to meet with our University of Birmingham friend. Once we were parked in the carpark, I left Meg in the car whilst I walked a hundred yards or so round the corner to get a document popped in the post. Once I had done this, I felt in my back pcket to check that my front door key was safe on a little lanyard and keyring that was attached to it. I was dismayed to find that it was missing but I know that this sometimes pops out of the back pocket of my trousers. Whether this pocket is particularly shallow I cannot say but the other day I found that my front door key was missing and as I went to the car to see if it dropped out of my pocket whilst there. But as I went to the car, I discovered my front door key on the driveway outside our house so was naturally was very relieved. But this morning when my key had gone missing again, I immediately drove the car back to the house to see if the missing key was again on the drive or indeed inside the house. Not being there, I drove past our newsagent to see if the missing key was on the pavement near to the newsagent. It was not there either so I went again to the Waitrose car park, left Meg inside the car and walked slowly to the postbox to attempt to locate the missing key. I did not find it but on the way, I bumped into our University of Birmingham friend and I explained to him my quest for a missing front door key. We walked slowly to the postbox and then the two of us walked back slowly to our parked car but taking a very slightly different pedestrian route. And then I found my missing key lying on the pavement where anyone on earth could have picked it up and run off with it – although it has no signs of the house address. To say I was thanking my good fortune is putting it mildly so we immediately repaired to Waitrose for a celebratory cup of coffee. Tomorrow morning, I am going to make it a priority to go to the gent’s outfitters on the High Street to see if I can find a pair of trousers with appropriate zips so that losing house keys is a thing of the past. What I used to do when we were on holiday in Spain was always to have a special wallet which had a chain attached to it so that I could attach it to my trouser belt and never be parted from it. In the context of a holiday, where one is often heaving oneself at a funny angle fron the back seat of a taxi, I found this has saved my life on more than one occasion. Also in the case of a black wallet we have the ‘black on black’ syndrome where a black wallet falling onto the black floor of a car can render it almost invisible. After we had consumed our elevenses, our friend needed to depart for a midday appointment that we had but as we were cooking a nice beef joint, we invited him round to the house to participate in our meal if he felt so inclined. I had bought some carrots and made a parsnip and carrot mash which is a particular favourite of ours when we have a beef meal. I dished up a third portion and kept it warm in the oven and our friend turned up after his appointment and enjoyed the meal and we all further treated ourselves to some ice-cream, enhanced by a few plump apricot halves and a drizzle of honey. The washing up seemed to take quite an age but nonetheless we got this done and enjoyed an hour of a natural history programme on the life of gibbons, filmed in Malaysia.

This afternoon, there are several football relegation battles being played out across the country. I still vaguely follow Leeds United but am regularly disappointed as they seem to make a good start to matches and then throw things away. Today they needed to win and both Everton and Leicester are in a similarly parlous position so the various matches are not only hard fought and exciting in themselves but the fate of one’s team often depends on what is happening in the parallel matches as well as one’s own. Leeds seem doomed as they are losing the match 0-2 which they need to win whereas Everton have scored a very late goal which might just have secured their survival.

The spell of fine weather continues – as it is Bank Holiday on Monday, this is quite surprising really because over the years one has got used to the perverse way in which bad weather seems to intervene just as a Bank Holiday is due and then for the weather to improve the minute the holiday is over. We knew that we had no particular commitments to see anybody in particular today so we made up our elevenses so that we could have them in the park. We did coincide, though, with Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who was beetling around at quite a pace of knots as he does every single day despite a slightly gammy knee. He informed us that within only a few months he would actually achieve the landmark of 90 years old so his energy and vigour are quite remarkable.

Last night, we received the sad news that the brother of Meg’s cousin had died, two weeks short of his 100th birthday. We knew that he was in a residential home and that his sister, Meg’s cousin, was in regular contact with her brother and actually spent a few hours with him before his actual demise. A bit of a dilemma is opening before us, though, because whilst a son is living in the area, practically the whole of the rest of the family, including ourselves, are spread across the Midlands. So I am left wondering where the funeral will be held but I suppose local undertakers would like to keep things within the area. This means that the majority of remaining family members will need to journey down from the Midland to Cornwall for the funeral. We do not know as yet what the funeral arrangements are going to be but Meg and I have been thinking about the logistics of attending the funeral. The way that our minds are working at the moment is that we think we will probably go down and stay in a hotel for both the night before the funeral and also for the night of the funeral day itself, thus having a little break of a couple of days in what we know is quite a picturesque part of the world. So we will just have to sit tight for several days until the funeral details have been finalised after which we can make our own more concrete plans. As it happens, Meg and I were in touch with her Cheltenham cousins (the daughter and son-in-law of her actual cousin) to arrange for them to visit us here in Bromsgrove in about three week’s time. We have made the arrangements but we may see each other in the meantime as funeral plans develop. I think that it will only be the first or second time that Meg’s cousins have visited us in this house and there have been a certain number of changes since their last visit. I am thinking about a boeuf bourguignon for a family meal because most of this can be done in our slow cooker and it is the kind of meal that will keep well if our visitors encounter delays on their journey.

They say that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks but I have been trying something new, computing-wise, at the moment. I have reconfigured some of our savings accounts so that instead of several independent little savings accounts for various purposes, I now only have one but a spreadsheet to keep track of the various ‘pots’ within it. I can see the advanatges of this method of working but I suppose one has to be incredibly disciplined not to swap entries willy-nilly from one cell of the spreadsheet to another. But so far, so good so I shall adopt this new method of working for the foreseeable future.

This afternoon, we started watching ‘Casablanca’ but having seen it several times before, we were quite easily tempted to switch over channels to watch the Cup Final match betwen Saracens and Sale, the two premier teams of English club rugby. Until about 20 minutes before the end of the match, the final result was genuinely in doubt but Saracens moved to a 10 point lead just before the end, one of the tries being an incredibly tight decision whether the ball had been held up or not but eventually the tip of the ball being adjudged to have just hit the ground a split second before a Sale arm held up the ball. Rugby as a game often hinges on incredibly tight calls such as this one but I suppose I have to settle for the fact that Saracens did have a marginal edge against their opponents although I wanted the Northen club to win.

Sky News is showing images this afternoon of long queues and ‘scenes of utter chaos’ at the UK border due to a nationwide problem with e-gates at ports and airports. The technical problem caused electronic gates to stop working late on Friday, meaning all passengers have to be processed through staffed airport desks. One does have to wonder what kinds of backup computer systems are in operation (or rather not in operation) for failures to take place nationwide. One suspects that there must have been a lack of investment and robust testing of systems for this to develop but I suppose I am thankful not to be caught in the middle of it all.

Today dawned as a beautiful bright and sunny day and we were looking forward to the day ahead. First of all, our domestic help arrived and we always enjoy a chat and a catch up on the week’s news. We discussed with her one or two lighting changes we had made to our sitting room where we decided to relocate one of our good floor-standing lights and discussed some other options for some supplementary lighting where we might need it. We finally made it to Waitrose for our coffee and here we met with one of pre-pandemic friends that we normally meet up on Tuesdays but she had beeen prevented from visiting us on that day. Eventually, our University of Birmingham friend showed up and we were delighted to share with him some of the events of the week as well as discussing some oher ventures that we might make in common. It was decided that our friend would come and share in our lunch which, as it was a fish pie, was easily extendable from two portions into three. As well as broccoli, I also made a special mixture of vegetables which started off as a diced onion and a diced pepper and was then enhanced with some plum tomatoes cut sideways, a dollop of pasta sauce and finally some tomatoe purée which added a little bit of zest. We finished off with some ‘real’ ice cream which we ate outside in the garden as the kitchen where we ate was a smidgeon too warm for us. We finished off with some coffee in the lounge and then spent some time comparing the routines in which we engaged during our afternoons and evenings. I have a feeling that after the 7.00pm news on Channel 4 and before the more serious and entertaining programmes start at 9.00pm, the programme makers do not lavish too much attention to the offerings that they put before us between 8.00pm-9.00pm as they are putting their children to bed.

I read a couple of items in The Times the other day which gave me pause for thought. It was that that both BBC Radio 4 and also ClassicFM were losing listeners at quite a rapid rate. This even extended to the classic Today program which has traditionally been listened to by millions of people as they get themselves up in the morning. It always contains really up-to-date political news and tries to present a topical but analytical approach to the forthcoming day’s news. The explanation for Radio 4 in the columnist that I read was arguing that Radio 4 was losing listeners because it was constantly ‘preaching’ at them and people resented this high-handed approach from the BBC. I cannot say that I have ever noticed any of this and my criticism of Radio 4 is that it occasionally fails to land the appopriate punches on the politicians of the day and sometimes lets them get away with murder, so to speak. On the occasions that the BBC does try to pursue a more aggressive approach e.g by suggesting that the politician is failing to answer the question and tries to get them to answer the question that is asked instead of getting an evasive answer, it then gets pilloried by other parts of the right wing media who go ahead to accuse the BBC of a left wing bias. But I think the explanations for the relative demise of both of hese radio channels is more prosaic. I suspect that the audience for both of these programmes is predominantly middle aged and older and, I suspect, is more appealing to middle class than to working class audiences. What I think is happening is the impact of demography where the audience is ageing and eventually dying off and failing to attract the commensurate numbers of a younger audience to compensate. Hence, I think that the changes in audience may not not be so much members of the audience switching off and turning to other channels but failing to switch on in the first place as the age profile of the channel ages with time. No doubt, this question could be answered by more detailed audience research but I find the news about the relative decline of these two radio channels depressing as I listen to them both almost exclusively throughout the day.

In the late afternoon, we received a much anticipated telephone call from a bank which we had expected to get some details finally in place for the transactions which my son and I have been conducting. We need to get everything done by the end of the month which is, of course, next Wednesday but the third Bank Holiday of the month intervenes on Monday and this is cutting the number of days by one and the end of the month is rapidly approaching. But the member of the Bank who my son and I know quite well (and we have even got the personal telephone number) gave us the reassurances that we were seeking that all of the necessary arrangements were in place and all we had to do was to sit tight and wait. Moreeover, she promised a further telephone call to us next week to reassure us that all was well so we started to feel relaxed and a little more at peace with the world.

Today was quite a significant day for Meg and myself as we shall see. As Thursday is our shopping day, I had got to the supermarket just before 8.00am and had got all of my shopping done and newspaper collected by 9.00am. Then we got everything put away which was quite easy in a light week and breakfasted. Then Meg and I made our way into town and paid a visit to the local branch of our bank. There we organised for a transfer of funds into the bank account of our solicitors. All of this was occasioned by the fact that my son and daughter-in-law had moved out of this house some year and a half ago and we have been busy disentangling our ownership details and finances so that things are now exactly as we would want them to be. Incidentally, it seems much easier to arrange things jointly as we did all those years ago then to disentangle them but our plans seem to be working out pretty smoothly so far although there are one or two things still to be regularised. Anyway, Meg and I are very happy to have got to this stage and to some extent, it is a weight of our minds as well. We celebrated by treating ourselves to a bowl of ice cream as we sat on the bench in the front of the house during a rare burst of sunshine before the skys clouded over again.

The media have been incredibly excited this afternoon as a small silver car has smashed into the gates installed at the end of Downing Street. It seems that the police responded with alacrity and professionalism and fortunately there was no random shooting involved. One can only imagine that in the US, the police might have used firearms first rather than any other protocols and the driver might have been shot dead rather than questioned. But the police have arrested the sole driver of the car and cordons have been erected along Whitehall. But at this moment, the police seem pretty relaxed so it does not seem that we have witnessed a terrorist attack in the making but perhaps just the results of a simple accident. Downing Street absolutely swarms with armed police but the reporters are saying there is now quite a relaxed attitude on behalf of the police so perhaps the incident will now gradually ‘unwind’ once it has been established that there is no terrorist intent.

Today was the day when the immigration statistics for the last year are to be published. There was a certain amount of ‘expectation management’ as a total figure of 700,000 and upwards has been frequently mentioned. But the published figures revealed that net migration rose to 606,000 in the year to December 2022, which figure is the highest on record for a calendar year. It comes despite a Tory 2019 manifesto commitment to ‘bring overall numbers down’. The figure was 488,000 in 2021. Net migration is the annual number of people arriving in the UK when both immigration and emigration are taken into account. The figures, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning, show that total long-term immigration was estimated at around 1.2 million in 2022, while emigration was 557,000. The government is making the (quite valid) point that the figures are swollen by the numbers of Hong Kong who were granted visas as well a similar offer to the Ukraine. A lot of visas have also been awarded to students and many universities are desperate to recruit as many overseas students as they are able. Students represent the largest part of non-EU migration at 39%. But the fees they pay were worth around £19bn in exports in 2020, more than aerospace exports. And that was in the teeth of the pandemic – it will surely be even more valuable now. Work visas are the next biggest chunk – and here, this is partly thanks to the skilled worker – largely for health and care. The public certainly do not want less less staffing in the NHS, for example. So public attitudes towards immigration seem a lot more nunanced than the days of the toxic Brexit debates. The Tories might care to reflect upon the fact that at the mainly white immigrants from the UE have more than been replaced by the non-white immigrants from India and Nigeria – was this ever their intention, one asks oneself?

On the other side of ‘the pond’ the Republican Ron Desantis , a Trump-light figure, was announcing his intention to run for President. He was due to do this in a novel fashion by having an on-line discussion with Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter on Twitter itself. But there seemed to be numerous technical glitches and the discussion did not start for about 20 minutes but not before threats were heard that the relevent technicians might be sacked on the spot. So this novel way to announce a candidature was a fiasco compared with use of the Main Street Media so Donald Trump himself must have been laughing at his opponent’s discomfiture. At this stage of the proceedings, Trump seems well ahead of his rival but this may not last of several other court cases some to fruition in the next few weeks.

Today has been marked on our planning board for a week or so now because it is the day when I am due to go down to our local medical centre for some routine monitoring tests. We were due to be seen at 10.30 and I took Meg along with me and this stage of the proceedings went as expected because it was the practice nurse taking some blood samples and routine measurements. The real ‘moment of truth’ will happen in about a couple of weeks time when I have another appointment with the practice but on this occasion to discuss what the blood tests reveal. This part of the morning was quite satisfactory but then it all started to go downhill. After Meg and visited the eye clinic some nine days ago, some special drugs were prescribed for her and I got a text from the ‘Community Pharmacist’ that the medication was with the pharamacy. So, as it is part of the same premises, Meg and I called in at the pharmacy to collect the prescription but they could not find any trace of it. They recommended that we go back upstairs to the practice, which we did, to find out what had happened to it. In the practice, I was given a code number to show the item had been dispensed and then went down to the pharmcy again. In the pharmacy, they did not have it on the premises but thought it might be with the online delivery service and it should have been received by now. As this has not arrived, then the onus is on me to do lots of online chasing to see what has happened to this medication. As you might imagine, I am not a happy bunny in all of this as the onus is now on me to do all the chasing to see what has happened. Chasing ‘online’ providers is always a rather fraught process but I am going to try later on today to see what progress I can make.

This afternoon it was a beautiful afternoon so I thought I would seize the opportunity to get the lawns cut. I thought I was going to run short of petrol but fortunately I had enough to get this afternoon’s job done but I have to remind myself to get another gallon’s worth before I start the lawn cutting process next week. After that it was a quick consultation with my solicitor to get some of my legal work done and my ducks are almost, but not quite, in a row for me to complete my transactions quite soon. But at least things seem to be moving in the right direction and one has to be thankful for small mercies when it appears that things are going right rather than wrong.

All kinds of allegations are swirling arond Boris Johnson this afternoon. It has all started off with the Cabinet Office and the Whitehall machine getting its act together for the formal evidence to be handed to the independent enquiry into the COVID pandemic.
But Boris Johnson has been battling fresh claims he broke lockdown rules after The Times reported that he had been referred to the police by the Cabinet Office after his diary revealed visits by friends to Chequers during the pandemic. The trips to the country residence were highlighted during preparations for a public inquiry into COVID, as well as new allegations about his behaviour in Downing Street, the newspaper reported. It looks as though the Prime Ministerial diary as well as a WhatsApp trail are crucial bits of evidence here. The Cabinet Office seems to think that what they have uncovered is such a ‘hot potato’ that they are immediately passing the whole thing onto the police so as not be accused of a cover-up. At the end of all this, I suspect that the police may well have their suspicions but no real evidence trail. It does look as though Boris Johnson had been inviting friends and perhaps civil servants and other politicians to Chequeurs (his grace-and-favour country residence for use primaily at weekends) But did they comply with the COVID regulations in force at the time? Unlike Downing Street that has security cameras all over the place, perhaps Chequeurs has not. So can Boris Johnson prove that his guests actually complied with the relevant COVID regulations and can the police prove that they did not? I can see this case petering out in a week or so for lack of any evidence. But another battle royal is also taking place as the COVID enquiry is demanding unredacted WhatsApp messages whilst Downing Street is refusing. Who will win this tug-of-war, it is hard to say.

Rishi Sunak is appeasing the right wing of the Tory Party by accepting the advice of his ethics advisor that Suella Braverman did not break the Ministerial Code (although it looked to many as an open and shut case) Rishi Sunak said that after receiving a letter from Ms Braverman – in which she apologised for causing ‘distraction’ – ‘my decision is that these matters do not amount to a breach of the ministerial code’. However, acknowledging the row that ensued following the reports, he added: ‘As you have recognised, a better course of action could have been taken to avoid giving rise to the perception of impropriety.’ So the mildest of slaps on the wrist, then.

So Tuesday dawns to our normal set of routines for a Tuesday. After we had breakfasted, Meg and I collected our newspaper and made our way towards Waitrose where we met up with two of Tuesday morning regulars. One of the topics in our conversation was the hardships endured by the population in the immediate aftermath of WW2. The very harsh winter of 1946-47 caused severe hardships in economic terms and living conditions in a country still recovering from the Second World War. Herds of animals either starved or froze to death. Two enduring aspects of this really impinged upon me when I started my primary school in 1950. As the country was so short of absolutely everything, every single crayon allocated to us in the school was cut into two to make them last as long as possible. Another memory that I have is that we had toilets outside the main school building and one needed permission from the form mistress to go to the toilet. She would reach inside her tall desk and reach for the roll of ‘San Izal’ type toilet paper (soft toilet paper only came years later) allocating you either one sheet or two sheets of paper depending upon her assessment of your size and need. Incidentally, the IZAL brand finally ceased production in 2010 after being sold to Jeyes in 1986. We then did a little bit of shopping in the store before returning home.

After donning my kit and walking down to my weekly Pilates class, I returned home shortly before 3.00pm. Then we had our normal lunch of fishcakes and awaited the arrival of our University of Birmingham friend who had asked if he might pop round in the afternoon. This he did and we had a cup of tea and a chat on our outside terrace, perused at all times by Miggles, our adopted cat, who was luxuriatng a little in the afternoon sun having been fed. It was a very pleasant afternoon but sitting outside was a reminder to me how much garden tidying up needed to be done when the opportunity arises.

Some political news that has emerged this afternoon concerns the fate of Dominic Raab, the ex-Deputy Prime Minister, who was forced to resign after a series of bullying accusations against him were found to have some substance. He has decided to leave politics and not contest his seat when the next general election comes arond in about 18 months time. Raab’s once-safe constituency of Esher and Walton in leafy Surrey – which he won by 28,000 votes in 2015 – is now marginal, with a majority of just 2,743. The Lib Dems were completely confident that this seat would easily fall to them but it is an interesting question whether a ‘new’ opponent would be easier to defeat ot not. But what is interesting about the Raab decision is that he is not alone. There are 53 current MPs who have decided not to stand at the next election – of which 36 are current Conservatives, and three are independents who won their seats as Conservatives in 2019. It seems that many Conservatives are resigned to the fact that they will not win the next election and not many of them relish the prospect of 5 years (or even 10 years) in opposition which is the likely fate of the current Conservative party.

Every so often an item is broadcast on the regional news which is shocking in the extreme. Today an item was broadcast about the way across the West Midlands region, food bank contributions are being channelled towards the local primary schools. As half term approaches, so does the prospect that many children who would have been fed at school with a school dinner and also been provided with a breakfast face the prospect of no food in their stomachs over the next week. Some parents must look dread the occurrence of the half term period as childcare may be difficult to organise and they cannot afford to feed their children in any case. Apparently, 320 Tories voted against the extension of free school meals into vacation periods which must be the majority of the parliamentary party. I remember being somewhat shocked when I was very briefly in New York for a conference and saw a big sign in Central Park advertising free food for school kids – even some decades ago, the American school system evidently gave school children some nourishment during the normal school term times but all kinds of ‘ad hoc’ arrangements had to be made, often on a voluntary basis, to ensure that poor (and predominantly black) school children were fed in the summer vacation.

There is some breaking news this evening that Boris Johnson has been referred to the police by the Cabinet Office after his diary showed friends visiting Chequers – the grace and favour home – during the COVID pandemic. This was plainly against the law at the time but, no doubt, Johnson and his supporters wull argue that all of this was work-related activity and therefore lawful. The Lib Dems, however, say that Mr Johnson should ‘consider his position’, and also called for the taxpayer to stop funding his legal defence for the Privileges Committee probe into whether he misled parliament about partygate.

Today turned out to be one of those ‘chasing around to catch your own tail’ kind of days. After we had breakfasted, Meg and I made our usual trip into town were we picked up our newspaper and then began our round of things that we needed to do. The first of these was to call into our bank to ask for some advice about how to arrange for the transfer of some funds and the advice we were were given was fairly helpful but we will have to wait until later in the week to effect what we want to do. The next thing along was to call in at a photographers on the High Street to arrange that Meg has an up-to-date photo of herself that we found out we needed by a piece of mail that arrived in this morning’s post. Since our neighbour from across our communal green area died, her house has subsequently been sold together with the interest that our neighbour had in the ownership of the communal green area. This is now now working its way, late, through the legal process and we had a request from a firm of solicitors that we confirm our identities but also we update the form for regularising the records of ownership with the Land Registry. This is now so much more complicated than was the case a few years ago but also requires confirmation of identity plus up-to-date photos which all to be verified by a solicitor before the document is returned to the originating solicitor. So this explains why Meg and I have need to do a certain amount of running around to get a photo organised and to have forms signed for us verifying our signatures via a helpful friend who has to witness the document. This happens to parallel some similar runnings around in which my son is engaged also. It appears that solicitors have to go through these legal checks to comply with Money Laundering Regulations but I do ask myself whether all of these checks are incredibly burdensome for the law-abiding majority of the population but probably do not deter the organised money launderers of this world. What is particularly galling is that London is practically the money laundering capital of the world. London has long been an appealing destination for global elites with deep pockets. Since the 1980s, the United Kingdom’s relaxed regulations, world-renowned capital markets and thriving real estate market have created a welcoming environment for foreign investors. While many elites want to invest their wealth legitimately, others have historically leveraged London’s financial ecosystem to conceal dirty money. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, for example, Russian kleptocrats used ‘professional enablers’ in the U.K. to avoid taxes and acquire assets, according to the Chatham House. This is known as money laundering or making illegally gained funds appear legitimate or ‘clean’.

To cap this little tale, our kettle sprang a leak this morning and as boiling water and elecrics do not form a good combination, I thought I had better get it replaced straight away. So in the late morning, I made a lightning visit to our local Asda store which in the past has had a fair choice of kettles. I chose a mid-priced one which seemed to be reasonable enough and am just in the process of bringing it into use. The makers recommend that you boil two kettle fulls of water and then dispose of it before you start to use the kettle in earnest. I decided to pour the kettle fulls of boiling water along the edge of one of our lawns where I know that in the past ants have made their home and thought that might be an ecologically sound way of disposing of the boiled water. Meg and I settled down to watch Suella Braverman defend herself in the Commons this morning from the accusations that she asked civil servants to organise a one-on-one ‘driver awareness course’ after her admitted speeding offence. Suella Braverman evaded all attacks on her, which were not many, by simply refusing to answer the question she was asked and repeating the facts that are not in dispute that she was caught speeding and accepted the penalty of the fines plus the points on her licence. The Prime Minister discussed the case of the Home sectretary with his ethics adviser this morning but it is unclear whether further investigations are to take place. But this whole case comes from a politician who has broken the Ministerial code before and has even been sacked for it but was still reappointed to appease the right wing of the Conservative party. Indeed, it is said that the PM may not want to sack her because she is more of a danger to him outside the government rather than inside so political considerations, rather than ethical ones, will be the most important considerations in this case.

On our way back from town, we have a fairly horrendous crossroads which is a five-way junction with slopes on two of the approach roads – but Worcestershire County Council refuse to put traffic lights there. We witnessed the results of the latest crash where two cars with their front ends stoved in had been pushed onto the verge. This poor junction has been like that for decades but nothing seems to persuade the authorities to have traffic lights installed.

The spell of bright weather continues and Meg and I got ourselves going, breakfasted and ready for the spate of politics programmes which are the staple for a Sunday morning. Last night, though, after we had been to church in the late afternoon, we had our light tea whilst listening to the second of the Joan Baez CDs that arrived the other day. We knew even more of the tracks on this CD than on the first one and still have the third yet to enjoy. I have done a quick exploration of eBay to see if I can get any of tracks she recorded in Spanish but no luck so far. After we had had our share of politics, we went down into car to collect our Sunday newspaper and then made for the park which we have not visited for a few days now. The weather was really beautiful and the park was reasonably busy, so much so that we had to make a detour to find a bench upon which to sit to have our elevenses. Then it was a case of getting home and preparing the Sunday lunch which always takes a bit of extra time when we are slow cooking a joint as we were this morning. But we made a tasty meal and read the Sunday newspapers getting ready to indulge ourselves this afternoon with a viewing of ‘The Railway Children’ with Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins. The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway where the film was shot have been living of the fame of this film since 1970 when the film was made and the tunnel and one of the stations on the line feature heavily. A sequel and updating was actually released in 2022 but one really has to view the two films in the sequence in which they were made to appreciate the updated version.

Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, is in the news again but for all of the wrong reasons. She was caught speeding when she was Justice Secretary and before she was appointed Home Secretary. Under these circumstances, she was given the choice to either accept the three penalty points on her licence or to avail herself of the alternative which is to undertake a ‘Driver Awareness course’ This is standard practice for all of the ‘normal’ motoring population and many motorists decide to accept the option of attendance at a Driver Awareness course. So far, so good. But Suella Braverman actually asked her civil servants if they would organise a ‘special’ driver awareness course for her on a 1:1 basis so that she should not have to show her face and participate in a group of fellow speeding motorists. The civil servants in question refused as they were being asked to intervene in what is essentially a private matter. Eventually, Suella Braverman accepted the points on her licence and paid the fine and this is what the Home Office and supportive MPs have been saying since the story broke on the front covers of the Sunday Times. But the fact remains that a senior member of the government attempted to use the civil service in an entirely illegitimate way. Opposition MPs have been been clamouring that this displays the mindset, not unknown in this Conservative administration, that there is ‘one rule for us, another rule for the rest of us’ The Opposition are demanding that Rishi Sunak refers this conduct to the recently appointed
ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, the City grandee appointed as his adviser on the ministerial code. At first blush , this would seem to be an open and shut case of breaching the ministerial code but of course Rishi Sunak may decide not to refer the case to his ethics adviser. However, Suella Braverman is going to be in for a hot time in the next few days. Tomorrow, it just happens to the ‘Questions to the Home Secretary’ in the Commons and one can imagine a long queue of Labour MP’s all demanding that more transparency is required. On Thursday, the latest figures for legal migration are due to be issued and the word on the street is that these figures will prove highly embarrassing to the government as they may well top 700,000. It used to be Conservative party policy to attempt to reduce legal immigration to tens of thousands per year but the Thursday figures may a total seven times as high. The government will argue that offering entrance to the UK to the citizens of Hong Kong and the Ukraine account for some of he increase. But there is a particular irony that the government’s argument in the Brexit debate that they were going to ‘take back control’ (with the implicit asumption that this was meant to radically reduce immigration) is not borne out by the figures. This is likely to infuriate the Tory right wing and probably all of those who thought that Brexit was all about reducing immigration. So far, Rishi Sunak has not risen to a public defence of his Home Secretary and one can only imagine that, in private, he is getting irritated by her being constantly in the news for the wrong reasons but has not committed a transgression severe enough that means that he could sack her on the spot, which he probably would feel inclined to do.

Today was a beautiful day when Meg and I awoke so we are certainly looking forward to the rest of the day. After showering and breakfasting, we got ourselves down to Waitrose via the newspaper shop to meet up with some regular friends. The coffee shop always seems to be popular on a Saturday morning as I suspect that parents and grandparents offer to treat their offspring at the weekend. The downside of all of this is that there seemed to be a proliferation of shrieking and wailing young voices from the 2-3 year olds – as soon as one voice abated, another seemed to arise to take its place. Nonetheless, we were pleased to see two of our regulars including our University of Birmingham friend who was feeling a little under the weather. We exchanged ‘hospital’ stories with each other as two of the three of us had been afflicted during the week but having got the moans out of the way, we turned the conversation around to happier subjects. After we had left, there were a few items that I needed to buy from the local Asda supermarket that do not seem to be readily available elsewhere so we went to the vicinity of the supermarket and I left Meg in the car whilst I went in search of items. Some I found eaily enough whilst others I could not find – even some of the supermarket’s own staff did not know where ‘Bovril’ can be found (which I have been taking to drinking as a tea substitute) Our University of Birmingham friend accepted our invitation to come home to lunch which was easily extendable from two into three. We were having some chicken, ham and leek pies bought about a week ago and complemented with a large leek, left over from last week and enhanced by an onion-type sauce and some broccoli.

After lunch, I was eager to recount to Meg and to our friend a particularly vivid dream which I had last night. I was the guest speaker, or at least asked to give a talk, at a meeting of academics largely, I think, drawn from De Montfort University where Meg and I worked for 26 years. I remember stepping up to the podium without a script or any idea whatsoever I was going to say. I think the talk was given an excessively broad remit such as ‘The role of the academic in the modern world’ which meant I could say anything I liked. I remembered to start by thanking my hosts for issuing me with an invitation and then proceeded with what I could call a ‘stream of consciousness’ in which one theme gradually led onto another. I know that initially, I was speaking about the role of the dialectic in academic life i.e. how through the operation of a thesis (known to one party) and its anithesis (known to another party) one could arrive at a synthesis which is now new knowledge unknown previously to either. The subsequent themes I cannot now remember but I seemed to be speaking in ‘real time’ in my dream and the whole talk was certainly more than 30 minutes – probably 30-40 minutes in total. But everything seemed to flow smoothly and without any arkward pauses, lapses of memory or even jokes and when I finished I had the most enormous sense of self-satisfaction of a job well done. I reflected to myself that if I had written a script or had some prepared notes, then it was possible the speech would not have flowed so smoothly. I then awoke, very abruptly, and seemed to be absolutely wide awake so I got up and prepared for myself a cup of special night time tea before I took to my bed again for the rest of the night.

Some interesting news is occurring on the Ukraine war front. US President Joe Biden told G7 leaders on Friday that the US will back a joint effort to train Ukrainian pilots for F-16 fighter jets, and will not oppose any allies that wish to transfer fighter jets. A plan that could take months to realise, it nevertheless fulfils a request President Zelenskyy has long made as part of his war efforts, and reflects a longer-term commitment on the part of allies to make sure Ukraine can better defend itself. This news is quite surprising as the US has resolutely set its face against the provision of F-16 jets until now. One wonders what the military calculations are that may be going in the background. Evidently, the ‘oldest’ generation of F-16 may be released to the Ukrainians and perhaps not directly but via other European societies who possess this fighter, such as Belgium. Meanwhile, Russia’s Wagner group claims full control of Bakhmut whilst the Ukraine says ‘fighting still going on’ Whilst this town may not have much military significance, the Russians appear, if reports are correct, to have lost a great many troops or allies in capturing this town for not a great deal of gain. The Ukrainians are preparing for a major ‘push’ against the Russians and so we may well be entering a decisive, and indeed critical, stage of this particular conflict. Of course, it is always a little difficult to disentangle the ‘hard news’ from the ‘spin’ that is put on the reporting of these developments in the war.

Today has been a bit of a day with one thing or another. A pleasant aspect of the day was our domestic help calling around with whom we always have a good chat and a catch up on family news. We then received a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend who we usually meet each Friday morning with the news that he would probably not be able to make our normal meeting today but tomorrow would prove to be all right. Nonetheless, we made our way down to Waitrose hoping to bump into some of the old faithfuls but it is was not to be and so Meg and I had coffee on our own. We then returned home and busied ourselves for some time before we set off for our lunch date in Droitwich. The venue which we had chosen for our lunch date we have visited before but the owners have changed and whereas we used to get really super food in the middle of the day, the offerings today were a lot more pedestrian. We got the cafe-restaurant just on time and our friends with whom we were going to lunch arrived within a minute or so, so this part of the day was working according to plan. When we got to the restaurant,though, there was a patron there evidently with a severe form of Tourette’s syndrome and she was vocalising all of the time – complete with swear words of course. I have seen instances of Tourette’s syndrome before which has been manifest by some sudden outbursts but not by a constant stream of loud vocalisation. I felt sorry for the cafe owners because at this rate they would have no business left. The patron has been visiting them some two or three times a week but today she had been there for a couple of hours, showed no signs of leaving and was getting constantly noisier and noisier. We ignored all of this at first and tried to let the noise of the disturbance drift over us but it was very wearing and obviously made the communication between us four friends difficult. So we paid up as soon as we possibly could and repaired to our favourite coffee bar which just happens to be around the corner where, fortunately, we could converse in some peaceable surroundings and enjoy some coffee and cake.

Our afternoon proved to have been disrupted as well. Our son is having some legal work done in parallel with our own but here complications started to raise their ugly head. My son and his wife have to prove their legal identities with recent passport photos and all of the other forms of ID demanded these days. Our joint lawyers suggested that we need to use another firm of lawyers to do this ID confirmatory work. So Meg and I raced into town to see the receptionist in our own solicitors to get a recommendation from someone else who get this work done expeditiously. To cut a long story short, we now have an appointment made to get this done in the foreseeable future at a price which suggests that solicitors are not poor. We hope that in the next day or so of working days (excluding the weekend, evidently) we can get all of this legal work done. I suspect that there is a massive national neuroticism about fraud in all kinds of financial transactions and certainly in the past year, I had been put through the mill to try to demonstrate that for our Residents Association, we were fit and proper persons who were who we said we were even though they have been our bankers for the past 12 years or so.

Of all of the political commentators on the present scene, I rather like Beth Rigby who often asks penetrating questions of our politicians. She asked Rishi Sunak today how did it feel ‘when you lose?’ Sunak appeared to not understand the question and was then flustered but eventually found his feet by repeating the mantra of the five or six bullet points he has been repeating for what seems to be weeks now. But I think the question is quite an interesting one because all of of us have to suffer failure (e.g. not being successful in a job interview) at some point in our lives. I suppose that for some occupations (and those in academic life) the question is particularly hard to answer because they have generally led a life in which they had always been successful. On the other hand, sportsmen of various hues always have to cope with the failure on about a 50% basis so I wonder if they can be more philosophical about the lack of success when it occurs. I think it was Enoch Powell, the eminent (or notorious) maverick right wing Tory politician who is said to have uttered the phrase that ‘All political careers end in failure.’ But what he actually said was somewhat more nuanced than this when he wrote ‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.’ But it is interesting to ask the question how any one of us mere mortals copes with failure – after all, success is easy to cope with but failure is another matter.