The day before yesterday, we had already completed the task of getting the petrol mower prepped, its oil changed and a start made on mowing the large grassed area in front of our house. Yesterday, I was delighted whilst Meg was asleep to complete the first mowing of the lawn which I already started and then having mowed it in one direction, I then go and mow in the transverse direction (horizontal rather than vertical) The first mowing of the season is always quite a hard affair because the grass if very ‘tufty’ after the winter and last autumn some sort of short term crisis had intervened and I had not managed to get the mower emptied of petrol and oil as I normally would. But I am off to a flying start this season as I generally reckon to re-commence the grass mowing starting on March 25th which is my son’s birthday. The lawn at the back of the house, not visible to visitors to the house, has yet to be done but I think I will wait until Monday for this task to be completed because as opposed to the somewhat gloomy and cloudy conditions today, the weather forecast is for some sun tomorrow. In the days when we used to have a long garden in the house in which we lived in Leicestershire and when I grew a lot of our own vegetables, I purchased a few gardening books so that I knew how to sow and care for my vegetable crop. One particular phrase used to ring out from the books which was to ‘choose a fine day’ as though all that one needed to do was to click one’s fingers and a fine day would emerge.

When I consulted Sky News early on this morning, there was an item about the ways in which so many household bills and utilities were due to rise this April. It is true that our Teachers’ Pensions are due to rise by 1.7% (in inline with the CPI for last September) but in the meantime we have some horrific increases in the pipeline with water bills, in particular. heading for an average rise in about 26% and other things like council tax and fuel due to rise by at least 5%. Living standards for all UK families are set to fall by 2030, with those on the lowest incomes declining twice as fast as middle and high earners, according to data that raises serious questions about Keir Starmer’s pledge to make working people better off. The grim economic analysis, produced by the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), comes before the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, makes her spring statement on Wednesday in which she will announce new cuts to public spending rather than increase borrowing or raise taxes, so as to keep within the government’s “iron clad” fiscal rules. In what it describes as a “dismal reality”, the JRF said its detailed analysis shows that the past year could mark a high point for living standards in this parliament. It concludes that the average family will be £1,400 worse off by 2030, representing a 3% fall in their disposable incomes. The lowest income families will be £900 a year worse off, amounting to a 6% fall in the amount they have to spend. The JRF also said that if living standards have not recovered by 2030, Starmer will not only have failed to pass his No 1 milestone but will also have presided over the first government since 1955 to have seen a fall in living standards across a full parliament. Comparing 2030 with 2025, it said the average mortgage holder is set to pay about £1,400 more in ­mortgage interest annually and the average renter about £300 more in rent a year, while average earnings are set to fall by £700 a year. The JRF said the poorest third are being disproportionately affected by rising housing costs, falling real earnings and frozen tax thresholds. I am not sure that the public at large really knows that is about to hit them but there are so many price rises in the offing that it must impact badly on the rate of inflation. The next tranche of elections are about 26 county councils (including Worcestershire) that go to the polls on 1st May and I suspect that the Reform party will massively benefit from discontent with the Labour government. There is quite an irony here because if the reform party were ever to take power in the UK, its cuts to welfare spending would put both the Conservative and the Labour Parties in the shade.

On Sunday morning, we received a visit from our University of Birmingham friend and this is always especially welcome. We sometimes have a YouTube baroque concert playing quietly in the background whilst we swop the news of the last week over a cup of coffee (and chocolate biscuits for our friend) Today, I actually played our friend some Joan Baez tracks from a concert recorded in London in the mid 1960’s and of course the clothing and the hair styles were just the things that we remembered from when we were ourselves at University. After he had left, the carers called round to see to Meg and then I prepared a Sunday lunch of ham in an onion gravy, runner beans and a baked potato. I was a bit disappointed that I only get a very few mouthfuls inside Meg on this occasion but I cannot force food and drink on her if she does not want to accept it. In the mid afternoon, I had quite a long chat on the phone with our Italian friend who lives down the road. I think that she thought that I would be pushing Meg down the road every day but it is only on two occasions per week (on a Tuesday and a Saturday) and that is why she has not seen me recently. She promised to try and pop around one afternoon if she can and in the meantime indicated that she would always be a source of emotional support for me in the weeks and months ahead (as I was for her, on the occasion of own husband’s death nearly ten years ago now) We share an interest in classic Italian opera (Puccini, Verdi as well as Mozart) and there are always arias within all of these operas with deep emotional significance for each of us.

Although last Thursday, we had had. day of glorious spring sunshine, this was not quite to be repeated on Friday, but the weather was still mild but cloudy. In the late afternoon on Friday, I decided to do the preliminary work to see if my trust petrol mower would function as it should after the long winter break, but I was a little fearful as it has not been properly ‘winterised’ i.e. old fuel and oil taken out in the Autumn as some short-term crisis had intervened. But there were a few things that to be done as the mowing season approaches. The first is to stamp down on the mole hills which have unfortunately appeared in out front grassy area which I did but with an amusing event on the side. Miggles, our adopted cat who loves to be near me when I am out in the garden observed my stamping down on the molehills and as I moved from one to another, the cat followed me from one to another to add his/her own stamping activity. Needless to say, the differences in our weights made the cats efforts completely ineffectual but the whole thing was so amusing I wished it had been captured on a video clip. I then knew that I needed to start the mower to let is run for a minute or so before I could drain off last season’s oil which would now be warm and flow more easily. I must have pulled the starter cord some 15-20 times with only the occasional little ‘cough’ after which the mower, thankfully, sprang into life. Fortunately, I had a big tinfoil pie dish to hand into which the oil could be emptied quite easily. Getting the new oil in was not easy as the oil container did not, as some oil cans do, have its own little plastic spout and I spilled quite a lot guessing the quantity, approximately 0.5 litre which I knew was needed. Then as I knew the mower would start, I decided to do the difficult lawn edges before I started on the mowing proper. I had done about a quarter of the first mow when the two carers tuned up for Meg, but they are so good with meg I let them get on with it before I completed half the lawn. I did not want to push it and wreck myself as the first cut of the season is always a lot of effort, and the mower has to be set to its highest setting. But I did complete one half of the mowing, knowing that on the following day it would be easier as the edges had been done, and the mower was ‘prepped’ and functioning. Normally, I start the mowing season on my son’s birthday which is March 25th so I am in advance of myself this spring. But once the mowing season starts, it has to be one on a weekly basis as the act of mowing the grass releases a hormone which stimulates the grass to grow apart from the warmer weather and the longer days, of course.

Today, after breakfast, it was time for us to go ‘down the hill’ and we met up with our regular friend in Wetherspoons, the other regular friend, the 91-year-old chorister, being taken out to a birthday party. Meg seemed to be asleep, or in a really deep doze all the way there and back and she has carried on like this for the remainder of the morning. I think this is Meg’s body just slowly shutting down by degrees and although it makes life easier in some ways, it presents dilemmas in others. In particular, were I to wake up and she is still semi asleep they trying to give her food and drink is counterproductive and could, in extreme circumstances, lead to choking if she were to take food into her mouth and then choke. So I have left Meg’s portion of her lunch on one side, and I shall try to get some of it inside her when she comes round a little. When we were in Wetherspoons, we bumped into some quite aged Irish friends of friends who we used to see in the park regularly in our Covid days. They told me that our mutual Irish friend who lives down the road was anticipating having a prostate cancer operation fairly soon but was feeling somewhat tired. After an MRI scan, it was revealed that he needs a heart pacemaker fitted almost immediately and this was going to happen on Monday. This was quite a shock as our friend is much younger than I am and is pretty fit with his cycling, golf and gardening activities and I was tempted to call on him to wish him the best as we passed his house. But I suspected that he and wife might be wanting some quiet time together so I made my way slowly back up the hill.

Sky News has a feature which documents the price rises that are going to hit the population in April which is, of course, just over a week away. The Teachers’ Pension which Meg and I both receive is due to rise by 1.7% which was the CPI figure last September. Bus some of the price increases in April are truly shocking with water bills due to rise an average of 26% whilst energy and utilities bills all have hefty increases. There is a limited amount that the average household can do to limit the impact of these increases, but I fear that it will come to a very rude shock to many of us in about ten days’ time. Council Tax bills are due to increase by the maximum which is generally 5.99% whilst the energy price cap is due to be raised 6%. I expect that the media will be dominated by several yelps of pain and, of course, we have the Chancellor’s financial statement due to be made next week and it looks as though some £10bn of savings will be presented to us.

It was wonderful to wake up this morning and, as I generally do when I make my early morning cup of tea, enquire of my smart speaker, Alexa, what the weather is like and to be informed that the temperature was now 8° and due to rise during the day, albeit with some showers of rain. Our chiropodist when she called yesterday was telling us that she was going to the Caribbean for her first holiday in five years and I know how he feels as this is the longest period of my life when I have gone holiday-less, primarily as a result of the pandemic. I was reading a story in Sky News this morning about the damage that was being wrought to the UK metals industry. We export huge quantities of a semi-finished product of stainless steel in huge bars called billets and this product is eventually manufactured into everything from surgical instruments to kitchen sinks. The Trump-imposed tariffs are now imposed on semi-finished as well as finished products which means that ships laden with British made stainless steel, if delayed across the Atlantic by storms (which they were), now face a 25% tariff wiping out the entire British profit margin. To make matters worse, foreign steel producers now priced out of the USA market are flooding the UK with cheap steel imports and this ‘double whammy’ is having dire consequence for the UK metals market. This story reveals the complex inter-dependencies and delicate ecostructure of international trade so the Trump tariffs will have ripples that spread far and wide. American steel producers will have to take their old plants out of mothballs to replace those supplies now impacted by tariffs, but this takes time and of the order of years. So, we are living in a situation in which tariffs imposed within days may take years of corrective action. In effect, we are seeing a similar series of events unfolding within the UK domestic scene with the ‘instant’ decision to abolish NHS UK which is the administrative and technical arm of the NHS. Many of these functions were established by law in the ‘Health and Social Care Act 2022’ and so to implant these functions back within the Department of Health and Social Care will take years and at a cost which has probably not been calculated. The politicians always work to an incredibly short time scale and never having worked in ‘proper’ organisations rather than as political advisers are probably completely unaware of the damage they may be causing. To illustrate this point, Keir Starmer appeared on a Channel 4 programme last night on the acute shortage of nurses and he claimed that getting rid of NHS UK would release sources that would go straight into patient care such as nurses. The trouble with this argument, even if had the smallest grain of truth, is that we would have to wait for several years to make the savings anticipated and it could well be the case that potential savings are considerably smaller once the redundancy and administrative costs of reorganisation are factored into the equation. But these are the calculations that civil servants make, and not politicians, and when the civil servants point out these problems to their political masters they are accused of being obstructive or uncooperative.

Yesterday morning was somewhat dull and cloudy, and I was not unhappy about not taking Meg out for the day, particularly as were expecting a call from our church’s Eucharistic minister later in the morning. We spoke about the recent death of one of the parishioners who we knew and then completed our short little service. After she had left, I made a quick visit down into town to collect my newspaper and on the way back, I was intrigued to be following a white van decorated, I think, in the motifs of the British Legion but with the expression ‘Grumpy old git inside’ As I was behind the vehicle, I never discovered to what organisation the van belonged but it was not an everyday sight. As it was St Patrick’s Day on the 19th of the month, I accessed on the BBC iPlayer a documentary detailing the life of St Patrick who was born of Romano-British parents but started off his life in England and not Ireland. Saint Patrick was not sold into slavery but was captured and taken as a slave to Ireland around 400 AD. According to his writings, he was a shepherd for six years in captivity before escaping back to Britain. However, a study from Cambridge University based on his writings suggests a different narrative. It indicates that Patrick may have sold slaves owned by his family to pay his way to Ireland, possibly to avoid becoming a tax collector for the Roman Empire. Despite these conflicting accounts, it is generally accepted that Patrick’s experience as a slave in Ireland was a formative period that deepened his faith and eventually led him to return to Ireland as a Christian missionary. After lunch, as we generally do each Friday, we treat ourselves to a catch-up of ‘Question Time’ from the night before to discover what the country at large is making of topical political questions of the day.

The day’s news is dominated by the complete closure of Heathrow following a dramatic fire in an electricity sub-station (and its back up system). As Heathrow has about 1350 flights in/out per day and a flight taking off every 45 seconds, the effects of this closure have been felt worldwide. Flights have been diverted or turned back if they have not reached ‘the point of no return’ and the consequences of the closure are incalculable. For example, there are a group of Chinese on board on aircraft bound for the UK and with UK visas but not for any other country so what happens to them when they land in another country? Inevitably, questions are raised about the fragility of the infrastructure in the UK, and one would have thought it impossible that there were not robust plans in plans for this admittedly rare event to occur. One does get feeling that the UK which used to have sound systems has been ‘hollowed out’ in recent decades – could such an event have happened in France or Germany? Who will bear the costs of this massive disruption may be hard to evaluate and it will undoubtedly have an impact on our ability to achieve some economic growth.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday in my blog was a phone call I received from a friend of mine down the road. We had some acquaintances from our local church who used to meet in a local club and the husband was suffering from dementia. Unfortunately, he has died in the last few days because he had sustained a fall and broken his hip and was then taken to the hospital whereupon they operated upon the hip. But he did not survive the anaesthetic and died without regaining consciousness. Under the circumstances I feel it was a massive relief to his wife, but I will write a letter of condolence to her and to his daughter but unfortunately do not think that I will be able to make the funeral. Nonetheless I can invite his widow round when she has overcome her immediate grief and mourning to come round and see us any afternoon that she would like. As a foursome, we spent one or two days out together whilst I could Meg into our car and we have fond memories of the couple, and their daughter but I am sure that as a devout Catholic, our friend is now in a better place. Today we are going to get some spring-like weather and the temperature when I awoke was above freezing, for a change but projected to rise to quite a nice spring like day. Almost inevitably, my thoughts turn to thoughts like lawn mowing because the grass looks desperately in need of a cut. Normally, the lawns would have received one last cut on November 5th of last year and the mower emptied of fuel and oil ready for the winter. But this did not happen last year as I suspect that the weather had turned very cold and Meg, as she was then, could not be left because of the acute separation anxiety she then experienced. So this year, I am looking for an occasion when a carer is with Meg and I met start to ‘prep’ the mower by emptying out last years oil and petrol. But this will entail getting the mower started to warm up the oil because I suspect that last year’s oil will be too viscous with the engine cold. It is always a great moment of anticipation ?(dread?) whether the mower will start after a six month pause and what has turned out to be a cold winter but we shall have to wait and see. At least I have my oil in place but I always buy the highest quality fuel (at a premium price) to ensure that the engine runs smoothly. The great problem with mowers is the 5% ethanol which is added to modern petrol to bulk it out and this can attract water and contaminate the fuel if left not in motion for long periods. Bit I do invest in a Briggs and Stratton fuel stabiliser so I am keeping my fingers crossed that all will be well when the mowing season starts again (probably from the date of my son’s birthday on March 25th). One interesting thing that has happened overnight is that Donald Trump has ordered the release of documents surrounding the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963. Around 2,200 files consisting of more than 63,000 pages about John F Kennedy’s assassination have been made available to the public and these will take some time for historians to digest. But, as of now, nothing startling has emerged. What is interesting about this event is everyone of my generation knows exactly what they were doing when they first heard news of the assassination, as it made such an impact across the world. When American leaders of the centre and left get shot at, they tend to die (both Kennedys, Martin Luther King) whereas the right wingers (Reagan, the segregationist and racist Governor Wallace, Trump himself) always seem to survive.

The care workers were scheduled to arrive a little later this morning but after they had departed, I gave Meg her breakfast of porridge and the young male Asian care worker arrived to do Meg’s sit whilst I went out shopping. I called into Morrisons to buy a few commodities that I know are not sold in Aldi after which, when I arrived home, the carer helped me to unpack the shopping. Then he and I sat down, myself with a coffee, whilst we went through the evaluation of the service that Meg was receiving. I needed to be brutally honest as I could be and in general the story was one of almost complete satisfaction with the actual level of hands-on care once delivered (particularly in the hands of the younger carers) but a certain amount of irritation with the organisation and logistics of the care as timings (and personnel) were often changed at very short notice. I remembered from my ‘quality enhancement’ days something that we used to enjoin upon our students when they were assisting us in evaluating the quality of the education they received. Here it is important to distinguish between a ‘niggle’ (minor annoyance which happens throughout the course of a working life), a ‘grumble’ which is more serious but should be capable of being addressed and finally a’complaint’ which is an issue that needs to be addressed and resolved. When the carer and I were filling in the evaluation form between us, I tried to ensure that ‘niggles’ were not documented but ‘grumbles’ were and, so far, I have not had any reason to raise a complaint. However, I imagine that some ‘service users’ as they are called, or better clients, might raise some trivial issues which, if documented will stay on the record for evermore. But at the end of the day, my lead carer and I were happy with the evaluation form which was the first he had to compile. We had a simple lunch and then our chiropodist called round and did both of our feet which was quite timely as I had developed quite a large and painful crack on one heel. If the weather holds out fine in the afternoon, I may be able to seize the opportunity of getting the mower started and last season’s dirty oil drained out.

Yesterday, it became clearer where the welfare axe has due to fall but, as predicted, it is new claimants that will bear the brunt of the exercise. There must be a great deal of uncertainty amongst those in receipt of benefit who receive some PIP but some of those will be in work in any case. I must say that I dislike the whole way in which the debate over welfare benefits is framed because we all seem to know that this is effectively a cost-cutting exercise. Despite the fact that the Welfare Secretary has adopted the Tory meme of being ‘trapped’ on benefits, I suspect that most recipients would use the analogy of a lifeline rather than a trapped door. After all, if we were rescuing drowning people after a maritime disaster, it would seem a strange use of language to say that that those who needed rescue were ‘trapped’ by the lifeline that was thrown overboard to them. One un-named cabinet minister really put their finger on the problems we face in society by observing that ‘The intellectual question that has not been answered here: is this about principled reform or is it a cost-saving exercise? There are some concerns this does not fix the issues around welfare but rather is about finding quick savings.’ I do think that there is a great lack of political imagination in play here and in no way would I wish to minimise the scale of the problems that we face. But the projected savings of £5bn are not a great deal in the scheme of things and it could be that the political damage done is not worth the cost of the actual savings achieved. Rather than being completely negative about the issue, I wonder to myself what I would do if I were in a position to politically influence events. One thing that could be done is to look at other European democracies who are facing similar problems and see what they are doing to face the rapidly increasing welfare bills. After all, the demographic facts are affecting every European society as the numbers of aged (and their infirmity levels) increase and the proportion of the population in work to support them diminishes. A second way to address the problem is to look at the contribution of employers, including particularly the voluntary sector. There was no mention yesterday insofar as I could tell as to what incentives might be offered to potential employers to offer some work to those in receipt of benefits. There is a lot of talk about the therapeutic effects of being in work so why not take a small proportion of the benefit and give it to potential employers to encourage them to offer some employment (at a small, subsidised cost) to those who are seeking it? After WWII, there was evident concern about the employability of those injured during the war and the legislation at the time made employers employ a proportion of those disabled in their work forces, As a local government officer, my mother had mentioned to me that her own boss had a prosthetic hand, having been injured during the war. Those of use of a certain age may remember that in the days when department stores had lifts, they were often staffed by disabled ex-servicemen who rose up and down in them all day. If I had to make a guess, I would say that the proportion of the disabled of working age far exceeds those levels seen at the conclusion of WWII, so why are not similar schemes being thought about today?

Later on in the morning, I was helping our domestic help to clear some things off our dining room table prior to its redecoration following the leak of a month or so ago. Trying to find some space to put things, I decided to relocate some book and was on the point of throwing away a couple of issues from the Royal Statistical Society entitled ‘Statistics in Society’ I quickly thumbed through the pages of each of them and in one I found the following article by Julian Le Grand, an eminent Professor Social Policy written some 18 years ago (2007). Extending the idea of Beveridge’s five giants of want, squalor, idleness, ignorance and disease, Le Grand enunciated what he called ‘the giants of excess’ The article abstract indicated ‘that for health in particular, excessive behaviour of various kinds contribute significantly to the major sources of morbidity (= illness) and mortality in our society, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney and liver diseases…the main problem that face both individuals and the government or other agencies tasked with improving health is that the costs of unhealthy activities impact in the future, whereas the benefits from them occur in the present’ What I found so amazing is that this was written (and known about) so long ago but the article could have been written yesterday and still retains its pertinence.

To our domestic help and the two care workers who called round to see Meg, I spoke to them at 2 minutes past 12.00pm and asked them what I was doing 52 years ago to the date (and the minute) The answer was that I was lying on a pavement having bit hit by a Hillman Imp that failed to stop at a T junction and hit myself (first) and then two of my students that it carried on its bonnet through some iron railways. Both legs were twisted out of position after the impact and it required an operation and some three months of rehabilitation before I could resume my work as a lecturer at Leicester Polytechnic again. As I was being transported by ambulance to the nearby hospital, one of the ambulance men asked his colleague whether to turn on the ambulance klaxon (known colloquially as a ‘doo-dah’) and his colleague, in view of the proximity of the hospital, replied that there was no point really. Hearing this remark, I concluded that I was so badly injured that I was not worth saving and hence there was no need for the klaxon. When in the hospital, I had my legs plastered up and I was then sent home because the hospitals throughout the country were accepting no patients as they were in the middle of an ancillaries’ strike. I was sent home and told to take some aspirins to cope with the muscles severed in one leg and broken knee bones in the other. Things have improved somewhat since 1973!

Yesterday we awoke to another cold day with a temperature when I got up of 0° although this is projected to rise to about 12° in the course of the day. We are expecting a whole of news to unfold during the day, both domestic and international. On the domestic front, we are going to have the announcement of swingeing welfare cuts to the dismay of great swathes of Labour MPs (who did not feel they were elected in order to pass these policies) but approved of by most of the public. The background, though, is sobering. Ms Kendall is expected to target personal independence payments (PIP) – one of the main forms of disability benefits for those with long-term illnesses or disabilities – amid a spike in claimants. The PIP bill has grown from £13.7bn a year before the pandemic to £21.8bn in the current financial year and is set to increase to £34.1bn by the end of the decade. The number of people claiming this disability benefit is projected to more than double from two million to 4.3 million. The full details are to be announced to the House of Commons later in the day and although it looks as the PIP benefit has escaped being not uprated (ie cut), the eligibility criteria are certain to be tightened and massive efforts made to get those of working age into work and off benefits. The devil is in the detail, of course, and a potential solution would be to continue to allow the full PIP after a return to work but one suspects that this will be taken as evidence that the claimant has overstated the reasons for the original claim which could then be cut. There is a rule that the claimant must have found these medical conditions hard for 3 months and expect them to continue to be hard for another 9 months which can be difficult to assess if medical conditions flare up and then die down again. On the international front, there is going to be a critical phone call between Trump and Putin later on in the day and some newspapers are speculating that this might be a cynical carve-up of Ukraine’s assets followed by an imposed ceasefire. Whilst our attention is being diverted by these issues, the ceasefire in Gaza seems to have broken down and the Israelis have launched massive strikes against Gaza overnight in which Hamas claims that 200 have been killed and over another 100 injured. This may be of course that Trump promised ‘Hell on earth’ could break out in Gaza and this may be a final push by Israel to attempt to achieve a complete domination of Gaza before the conflict burns itself out (if it ever does)

Last night, I received the news from the care agency that the young male Asian carer who often undertakes a visit to Meg has been allocated as her ‘lead carer’ which sounds like good news. When we see him, we will try and get more details about what exactly this means but I think it means that he will be review and oversee Meg’s conditions as he has been caring for her so many months and therefore make recommendations for any variation in the care package, all within the constraints of course of the budget allocated for Meg’s care by Worcestershire County Council (and to which we contribute).After a fairly rapidly taken breakfast, Meg and I made our way down the hill to Wetherspoons where we met up with our regular friend. Just as we were leaving, I received a call from my son informing me that there had been an incident in the vicinity of our house and we might not be able to able to get to our own house because dangerous live electricity cables were blocking our path. A near neighbour had some scaffolding erected around his house and in erecting their scaffolding, the firm had brought down two live, power cables which were snaking and hissing their way across the road. House alarms were going off along the length of Kidderminster Road. Thew entrance of our drive was blocked by the scaffolders’ van and we waited on a neighbour’s forecourt until the fire brigade arrived. Then another neighbour took pity on us and invited us into their house (Meg in her wheelchair) where we could wait until the National Grid repair team could arrive to repair the damage. It was now about 11.15 and we were told the damage would not be prepared until about 4.00pm but, fortunately, the team managed to isolate the cables and we were allowed back into the house at about 12.30. The electricity company had to turn off the power to 750 households in a complete block so the disruption was considerable and over a wide area. Naturally, although we were in the house, there was no power to boil a kettle for a hot drink but then we entertained the carer who, at least, managed to use the hoist to get Meg into her comfortable armchair as it has its own battery power supply. I have to say our neighbours were very hospitable in this mini-crisis and eventually we were pleased to get the power restored to us at about 2.30 in the afternoon.

Today has been a day full of news, both domestic and international. from which we have been cut off with our TV not being available. The timings for the care calls have had to be re-timed in view of this ‘outage’ in the middle of the day. The news from the Gaza conflict seems dire and it does appear that Israel have decided to break the ceasefire as over 400 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children and over 560 injured. This appears, at first sight, to be a push by the Israeli military to achieve a degree of dominance whilst the world’s attention is diverted by the Ukraine conflict. There has been a long nearly two hour telephone call between Putin and Trump and details are still to be released but the speculation is rife that Trump and Putin are carving up the Ukraine between them.

Yesterday morning presaged the start of the week and another change to our ‘normal’ domestic routine as the care agency was experiencing more short-term staffing problems and this meant that the number of care workers to get Meg up in the morning was reduced from two to one and I was asked to assist – under the circumstances, I do not mind as I shall be assisting the young male Asian carer who we see several times a week. This evening as well, there will be just one young female carer to put Meg to bed but again I am happier assisting one really experienced care worker rather than leaving Meg in the hands of two relatively inexperienced ones which has happened on occasions. Last night, after Meg had been out to bed, the news came through that Newcastle had won the Carabao Cup (which I gather is the sponsorship name for what used to be called ‘The League’ Cup) and it was the first time that Newcastle had won any kind of major competition since 1955. Although it sounds hard to believe, I have a sort of tenuous connection with this victory in 1955. My mother had decided that in her mid 40’s she would go off to college to train to be a teacher and mature students like my mother were quite a rarity in the 1950’s. My sister was to attend the Bar Convent in York as a weekly boarder but to come home at the weekends to be with her grandmother whilst I was despatched to the cheapest boarding school in the country (actually, a boarding unit of 40 in a direct grant grammar school, Thornleigh College in Bolton, Lancashire) Now my mother had evidently been called for interview in 1955 to the Teacher Training college in Newcastle called ‘Fenham’ which was then regarded as one of the best of its kind in the country- as people used to say of other colleagues that she was ‘Fenham’ trained. Now we come to the connection with the 1955 Newcastle United FA Cup Victory. I remember my mother telling me, and I would be aged 10 at the time, that when she visited Newcastle the whole town seemed to be in an FA Cup fever and wherever you went in the town, shop windows were full of the black-and-white Newcastle colours. Another connection with this era was the fact that I think my mother visited London because she successfully applied for a loan of £2,000 (multiply by about 35 to get it to present day values) from a body called ‘The National Council for the Education and Training of Women’ to finance her and the family during the two years of her teacher training. I asked her to make a particular note of the locomotive that pulled her train, and it was the A4 ‘streak’ locomotive known as ‘Wild Swan’ so even at that age, I must have had the first inklings of an interest in steam locomotives. This interest was to develop in my later years when I went ‘trainspotting’ (with an elder boy who lived around the corner) to York and Doncaster. Doncaster was a particular delight because there were huge engine repair sheds in the vicinity of the station around which we were allowed to wander (provided we kept to the sides of the building) during the so called ‘dead hour’ or lunchtime period when we had the opportunity to spot rare Scottish locomotives called down for repair.

The morning seemed attenuated as the carer was not scheduled to arrive until 9.00am this morning but I got up at the normal time and did some domestic jobs. Then it took practically an hour to get Meg washed, dressed and transferred to her comfortable chair in our Music Lounge. I discussed with the carer, who is one of the agency’s team leaders, whether we need to retime the visit to Meg first thing in the morning as 45 minutes is allocated but as Meg is getting somewhat more frail, it is taking somewhat longer than this and was practically an hour this morning. After we had breakfasted, I made a telephone call to the Wheelchair service provided by Worcestershire and told them the sorry tale of how Meg had slipped out of the chair a week ago. The receptionist taking the call was suitable horrified and I explained that i though that either additional support strapping was needed and the whole question is indeed raised whether the existing chair (called a ‘transit chair’) is adequate to the job of a round trip of 2½ miles. Then I made my customary trip to town in the car to collect the newspaper and some milk and returned to make us some elevenses, after which time the late morning carer arrived and I made her a cup of tea. We had a simple lunch but when Meg is very sleepy in the mornings, it is slightly difficult to her requisite portion of lunch fed to her because I have a feeling that while she takes it into her mouth, she does not always swallow it as she should (all of which is part of the disease process). In the afternoon, we entertained ourselves with the first part of the ex-astronaut Tim Peake presenting a series called ‘Secrets of our Universe’ on Channel 5 which has some stunning photography and then followed this up with a continuation of the Mozart opera ‘Cosi van Tutte’ which we started watching but did not get through to the end.

I am still evaluating my newly installed browser of ‘Brave’ about which opinions are sharply divided. On the positive side, there are no adverts or tracking activities to follow you around and this is surely a good thing. But the browser has to be financed somehow and the business model pursued by Brave is to allow you to specify the adverts that you want in which you get paid a smidgeon in a type of cryptocurrency. The Brave internet browser blocks ads and other online trackers by default, while other browsers do not. One reviewer noted that he noticed a difference immediately when starting using Brave as, after a day or so, he was not being ‘followed’ online anymore. Blocking ads and trackers is not just about privacy, though as it also speeds the browsing experience by reducing site load times. Most ads and third-party trackers are scripts that run in the background of websites, slowing things down. Chrome, for example, collects browsing information, so Google and its advertising partners can send you targeted ads. Brave downloads only the essential elements for websites, so it loads way faster than other browsers like Chrome—especially if one tends to have a lot of tabs open. Although the cryptocurrency features are off by default, it still takes a certain amount of work and attention to make sure that these features, which many (including myself) want to be well and truly turned off or disabled so that one can appreciate the advantages of the browser without any of the attendant disadvantages. This I have done and so far, so good.

This particular blog entry is quite significant because it is celebrating a ‘double’ anniversary. As well as being St. Patrick’s day, it is also the day when Meg suffered the episode a year ago that meant she ended up in hospital from whence it took about eight days to get her released back home again (and we had a chairlift installed in the meantime) But the other significant anniversary is that this blog is exactly five years old today, being started just before the lockdown for the pandemic five years ago. For those interested in numerology, this blog is [Day 1827] which is 5 x. 365 + one extra day for the 2024 leap year + one extra day for the fact the anniversary date is repeated (as the five years actually ‘runs out’ on the day before) On this particular occasion only, I am going to write a little about how this blog is written. When I wake up in the morning, I make myself a cup of tea and then sit down at my lounge laptop, Meg still being asleep. Here I ‘FTP’ i.e. File Transfer Protocol the relevant files from the day before. This includes the entry actually written the day before but with ‘todays’ date on it – this is why the blog typically starts off with the word ‘Yesterday’ These files which have to have the updated ‘Back’ and ‘Forward’ links updated are actually a backup text version kept on a different server to the official WordPress version but kept in case WordPress ever goes ‘belly up’ for whatever reason. Even the backup text version has its own backup as well in case a file ever gets misplaced. Once this has been checked over, the procedure taking about 5-10 minutes, I start to write today’s blog which gets put into WordPress at about 5.00pm in the evening whilst yesterday’s draft in WordPress is actually published. The writing of this log has evolved over the years because I have had to adjust to Meg’s illness and the fact that I cannot spend too much time in each day blogging whilst Meg requires my attention. So now I write using the MicroSoft email program ‘Outlook’ because what I write is saved in the ‘Drafts’ section but not actually emailed to anyone and this means that the work in progress is accessible to me in either of my laptops in the Main Lounge/Meg’s bedroom and also our Music Lounge. I set myself a limit of 1,000 words a day and try to write 400-500 words in this 6.00am start as it takes pressure off me to complete it later on in the day This explains why I now start off with political news as I see what Sky News and links has to offer being a bit more ‘on the ball’ than the BBC regrettably. When the blog for the day is complete, I then copy the entry over to another text editor when it is subject to another spell check and proof reading before it is finally posted to WordPress where it stays as a draft. Then at 5.00pm or thereabouts, all I have to do is get onto WordPress and click ‘Publish’ and so the day’s entry (which actually refers to the day before) is published. But for regular readers, you now know what is going on.

Last night saw the culmination of the Six Nations Rugby competition. Everything depended on the last match, France vs. Scotland because, should France fail to win, then England would, quite surprisingly, have won the championship having actually demolished Wales earlier in the day. The Scots looked as though they were going to go into half-time leading France but a last minute try was eventually ruled void because a foot had been seen by the TMO (Third Match Official) to be in touch and so the try was disallowed. The French scored a try early in the second half from which the Scots never really recovered so the French added to their winning score and emerged as worthy winners of not only the match but also the whole Championship. The real surprise about this year’s competition has been the performance of the England team for who it was predicted they would end up mid-table. But they won two matches by a single point and emerged, as we have seen, as runners up to France. My feelings of disappointment at this year’s competition being over is assuaged by the fact that a Six Nations womens’ competition is going to take over for the next few weeks and that, of course, takes us up to Easter.

It was a cold start to the day this morning with a temperature when I arose of -2° but the day would evidently be a fairly fine one. After breakfast and a quick dash into town to collect my newspaper, our University of Birmingham friend called around as is customary on a Sunday morning. After exchanging the week’s news, we invariable find something that excites both of our minds and today we were exploring the different shades of meanings of particular words as well as the characteristics of various regional accents. As I have some mastery of Spanish, I enjoy the way in a different language ‘cuts up’ your experience of the world by perceiving things in a slightly different way. Our friend is a much better linguist than I being absolutely fluent in both French and German as well as some Spanish that he has taught himself. We finished off discussing the ‘Sapir-Whorf’ hypothesis that language helps to shape our perceptions of the world according to what is symbolically important (the Inuits having many different words for snow, for example, as it is a much ore important part of their environment) After I made a telephone call early in the morning, A District Nurse called around to make a check on the Deep Tissue Injury that Meg has on one heel and which may require a specialist dressing in the future – but not, fortunately as it turned out, just yet. Meg and I had a conventional Sunday lunch of beef, carrots/peas mixture and a baked potato after which we indulged in a further episode of the ‘Pilgrimage’ programme which we often view on a Sunday (as it seems so appropriate)

The forthcoming week will be quite an interesting one, although we have no appointments scheduled as such. But Monday sees a particular anniversary the details of which shall be revealed in due course. As Meg and I listened to the repeat pf the ‘Question Time’ program yesterday, one of the panellists made the telling point that ‘there is always money for a war but not for the poor’ This is because the UK is certainly going to increase the proportion of its GNP to 2.5% to deal with the threat to us all in Europe posed by Russia but, at the same time, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is due to announce cuts to disability payments in which as many as a million of us may see cuts in disability benefits. Something has to be done about the burgeoning disabilities bill which we, as a nation, probably cannot afford but we are all fearful where the axe will particularly fall. I suspect that new claimants for PIP (Personal Independence Payments) will be one source of cuts, the other source being those of working age who are claiming disability benefits, often because of poor mental health and the long tail of the population who are still suffering the after effects of the pandemic. The difficulty here is that PIP does actually help to get some of its recipients back into work again, but the axe may not fall with sufficient precision so cutting the disabilities bill may have unintended consequences. Past history reveals that swinging the axe does not always work. When PIP was introduced in 2013, it was thought that the total saving would be of the order of £1.4bn but the actual savings turned out to be about £0.1bn. PIP was introduced in 2013 to replace the old Disability Living Allowance with the intention it would lead to savings of £1.4bn a year relative to the previous system by reducing the number of people eligible. PIP was initially projected to reduce the number of claimants by 606,000 (28%) in total. Yet the reform ended up saving only £100m a year by 2015 and the number of claimants rose by 100,000 (5%). Another attempt in 2017 to limit access to PIP was also reversed. The reason was that many people appealed against refusals that had been triggered by the tightened eligibility criteria. Also, the emergence of cases in the media which seemed unfair meant ministers, often under pressure from their own backbench MPs, ultimately ordered the eligibility rules to be relaxed. There is considerable unease in the Cabinet over the proposed measures and there may be a massive revolt amongst Labour MPs with as many as 80 being a figure that is bandied about which could almost threaten the huge majority that the Labour Party is enjoying at the moment. There is a lot of speculation swirling around that money will be saved by freezing the level of payments to be made in 2026 rather than uprating the benefits in line with inflation which would be an effective cut, but it is possible that Downing Street may have backed off this proposal in view of the considerable unhappiness of the vast majority of Labour MPs.

It was good to arise at the more ‘normal’ time of 8.00am for the carers this morning which means a 6.00am start for myself. After breakfast, we knew that we would probably make the trip down the hill to meet up with our friends in Wetherspoons but, of course, I had to ensure that Meg was well and truly strapped and wedged into her wheelchair so that we do not have a repeat of the incident of a week ago when she slumped out of the wheelchair. We knew that there two vital supplies that we had to purchase before out meeting, one of them being a supply of chocolate biscuits not for myself but for our University of Birmingham friend who may well call round in the morning. The other commodity of which I had run out is printer paper but the price of this seems to have risen enormously in the last year or so, in order to eke out supplies, I am rummaging through past printouts to see if there are any that I can utilise by printing on the reverse of the paper. I am pleased to say that the trip down and up the hill was uneventful, but the weather could have been a little more kind to us. When we got home.I started to prepare the lunchtime meal which was fairly simple to make, being a quiche that just needed heating up in the oven. I accompanied this with a portion of primo cabbage prepared the other day and then parboiled some carrot which I finished off with some petis pois, laced with a drizzle of honey and then finished off in the microwave oven. This afternoon and this evening, there are three Six nations contests to enjoy, the two critical ones being France vs. Scotland which France needs to win to secure the championship and the other being Wales vs. England which has proved to be quite a tight match over past few years.

Beth Rigby for Sky News is making the point today that Keir Starmer, in his efforts to reform the state of public services in the UK is heavy on rhetoric but light on detail, but the symbolism of abolishing NHS England was clear for all to see as this prime minister is borrowing from a Conservative playbook in an effort to improve services through deregulation, public service cuts and a bonfire of red tape. Whether a ‘slash and burn’ approach to public services improves efficiency in the long run is open to the question. Some analysts are making the point that abolishing NHS England at a stroke is liable to make personnel obsess more about what redundancy package they are to receive than put their hearts and minds into what a reorganised NHS administration should look like. The public services have been hollowed out by successive cuts and by below inflation pay increases in the past few years so the morale of many public service workers is so low that further attacks upon the service may not yield the benefits envisaged.

I think most of us have some knowledge of the workings of the UK NHS will take some time to absorb the shock announcement yesterday that NHS England (the management ‘arm’ of the NHS) is being completely abolished or rather some of its functions absorbed into the Department of Health and Social Care. A change of this magnitude would take tens of thousands of words to analyse properly which is not the function of this blog but I am just going to comment upon some of the language, or rather the words, used by politicians and picked up/amplified by the commentators and the media at large. Somewhere in my academic career, and it may even have been a chance comment in one of the lectures I attended in my university days, I was appraised of the fact that certain words are invested with a cultural meaning quite apart from the technical sense in which they can be used and broadly speaking, we can make a distinction between ‘hooray’ words (which make us feel good and we use approvingly) and ‘boo’ words (where we wish to convey disapproval) So, in the political sphere, ‘democracy’ is always an ‘hoorah’ word and is sometimes appropriated to find a place in the title of the country such as ‘People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen’. On the other hand, ‘fascism’ is always a ‘boo’ word designed to evoke negative feelings as, in the UK, is the word ‘bureaucracy’ or ‘bureaucratic’ Now returning to yesterday’s announcement about the abolition of NHS England, there were two words that constantly featured on the lips of the politicians. One, of course, was the word ‘bureaucratic’ which is always used pejoratively (but interestingly enough, in the political science in Spain where we have many contacts the word is used freely, and often, in a purely technical sense to mean the impartial administration of rules by properly appointed officials rather than the arbitrariness of an authoritarian dictator) The other word which was used so freely was ‘duplication’ often preceded by the adjective ‘unnecessary’ and this is an evident ‘boo’ word. But in modern organisations, heavily if not completely reliant upon their computer systems, there is always a ‘backup’ system or, even better, a ‘disaster recovery’ plan. But what is a backup system if it is not a duplication of computer records but you never hear the words ‘We must get rid of our backup system because it is a duplication’ which, of course, it is. So, this word ‘duplication’ was bandied about yesterday because it is a classic ‘boo’ word and was used to evoke negative feelings to help justify the NHS reorganisation – evidently the public is so gratified to know that ‘unnecessary’ or ‘wasteful’ duplication is now being abolished by ministerial decree. We had the amazing spectacle yesterday of the Tory party, including past Ministers of Health, applauding the actions of the Labour government and you know you must be onto a winner when even the ‘Daily Mail’ has a headline warmly approving of your actions, which is what we saw. Hardly anybody is asking the really hard question of how a huge and complex beast like the NHS is to be appropriately managed and one does get the feeling that various coordinating and sensible rationalisation of data flows are going to be jettisoned in the months ahead.

Yesterday morning, I had been asked if I could act as the assistant to only care worker to which I readily agreed as I get on very well this particular worker who I know very well and with whom I have often shared a task before – the only downside was the morning call was a 7.00am alarm call which meant an alarm call at 5.00am in the morning. But all went well, and we got Meg up and breakfasted, after which I popped out for a newspaper and then started viewing a Michael Portillo travelogue programme on Portugal (Channel 5) which focused on the city of Braga and looked fantastic. I had previously experimented with the ‘Pale Moon’ browser which seemed pretty good except that it would not clear the text from my Word Counter app which it should. So I downloaded an alternative and very secure browser by the name of ‘Brave’ and this imported all of my settings from Microsoft ‘Edge’ and seems to work like a dream. We lunched on some mackerel which I heated up in the rather novel way of immersing it in a pan of boiling water as the packaging states it could be eaten either hot or cold and I supplemented this with some potato and some sliced runner beans. After lunch, we treated ourself to the ‘Question Time’ which was first broadcast the evening before and we save for Friday afternoons. I was enjoying this apart from the discussions on the NHS when it was quite evident that members of the audience had no idea what they were talking about, only having their own experience being treated by a clinician in a hospital session. My enjoyment was interrupted, though, by something which is not rare these days of me falling asleep with a cup of coffee in my hand which promptly ends up on the floor. The solution is lashings of cold water, followed by equally copious sheets of kitchen paper and finally finished off with a steel hot water jug which I rinse out with boiling water and then use as a smoothing iron to absorb the excess moisture. But at least we have the rugby to look forward to during the weekend as the Six Nations rugby competition runs out to its conclusion.

As we might have anticipated, the Ukraine conflict is going to take quite a lot of time to resolve. Putin has announced that he is ‘broadly in favour’ of the ceasefire proposals but has laid down a series of conditions that means it is now up the USA to respond. This is classic playing for time tactics which it is evident that the Russians will deploy as they are making slow but sure military progress and it is in their long term interests to gain or regain as much of their territory as is feasible before a ceasefire comes into effect. If Trump is indeed the skilful negotiator that he claims to be, then no doubt he will be able to fix the problem ‘within a day’ by deploying his much vaunted skills written about (or should I say ghost written about) in his now infamous book ‘The Art of the Deal’.