Yesterday, we awoke to a temperature which was still in negative territory of -1° but with the prospect, after a cloudy start, of some clearer skies later in the day and temperatures that may well arise. I think the whole of the country is anticipating what is meant to happen in a day or so when the temperature is scheduled to rise to as much as 12° but this may well be a one day wonder and presages the start of some wet and windy weather when a low moving in from the Atlantic edges up to a ‘blocking high’ which is sitting over eastern England and Northern Europe at the moment. Many eyes are focused on Europe in the next few days ahead as European society is having to cope with some profound changes in the political landscape. European political leaders are facing the fact that defence spending needs to rise quite dramatically to cope with the threat from Russia who, with the tacit assistance of President Trump, may well get away with the seizure of some 20% of the Ukraine. In geopolitical terms, since the fall of the Berlin wall on 9th November 1989 then the regimes of the countries of Western Europe have allowed the proportion of their GNP to drift downwards as they have faced the pressures of an ageing population with more monies needing to be spent on their healthcare. Advanced economies used to spend more than 3% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on military goals, up until 1991. This number was lowered to as much as 1.6% of GDP by 2015. Only after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, did the defence spending in Europe begin to rise, albeit not sharply on a general level. By 2019, Europe still was not investing a nominal 2% of GDP, which is mandatory under NATO rules. But we are now in a situation where the approximately 2.0-2.5 proportion of GNP needs to rise by anything from a quarter to a half and where is the money to come from? The UK is now alone in facing up to these dilemmas, but the stark choices boiled down to some, or some combination, of the following. The most painful is to cut our spending on the welfare services in order to increase defence expenditures whilst another alternative is to raise taxation. There are some who argue that taxation of all kinds is at an almost record high and raising taxes and cutting living standards is a quick path to electoral oblivion. A third alternative is to borrow the money if you can find any investors in the wider world willing to lend it to us and which will have to be ultimately repaid, adding in the meantime to servicing costs to pay the interest on the monies borrowed. It is no wonder that the finance chiefs of European societies may well be having some sleepless nights as they wonder where the money for increased defence is to come from and how this need for extra money is to be sold to their respective electorates. Keir Starmer is both urging his European colleagues to spend more money on defence whilst also trying to persuade the Americans that they continue to provide a backdrop of support for a post Ukraine conflict world. As I am writing this blog, the ‘Today’ programme is discussing these very dilemmas, and I suspect that it is going to dominate our political agenda for the months ahead. The figure that is being bandied about is that some £9 billion of cuts needs to be undertaken which is the entire budget of our DEFRA ministry and cuts of some £17 billion are even being talked about. This cutting agenda falls into the lap of a Labour government and whether or not they will be supported by the right-wing parties (Conservatives, Reform) is an interesting question. The Conservatives look on current trends, as though they may be eclipsed on the right by the Reform (ex UKIP) party and the next local elections at the start of April will be the very first occasion when we can see whether these opinion poll forecasts are turned into actual votes on the ground.

Although we knew the outside temperature was on the cold side, the skies cleared somewhat, and so Meg and I set forth just at 10.00am to walk down the hill for the first time for a week and we first called in at Waitrose to collect our newspaper. In the store where we are so well known, the staff greeted Meg warmly although she was only half awake and one of the wonderfully friendly partners pressed a bunch of a dozen red roses into our hands (left over from Valentine’s day, no doubt) and then we made onwards to Wetherspoons where we had our by now traditional freshly prepared egg and bacon breakfast crumpet with a perpetual cup of drinking chocolate for £2.77. We met up with our two friends and I shared them my tales of woe concerning lost iPhones and delayed direct debits before we had to leave quite early to make sure we were home by 11.30. Fortunately, whatever wind there was blew from behind us on the way home so did not distress us, Meg’s normal sit of two hours on a Tuesday had been retimed but we told the agency to forget about the first hour (as we would be out) and to have the young carer, who we know and like very much, to just sit for the second hour. Then between us, we hatched up a plot which will play out as follows. Having prepared the roses and divided the roses into two bunches of six, I gave one of them to the young female carer and told her to tell her long term boyfriend (who is also one of Meg’s carers and coincidentally calling round tomorrow) to say that she had received the roses from a secret admirer and they had been left on her car windscreen. Then tomorrow, I am going to casually ask if either of them had received any Valentine’s gifts last Friday and then the young female carer and I are going to keep a straight face whilst I ask my questions in all innocence and then observe the reactions. I did enjoin upon the young female carer to ‘fess up’ if there was the slightest indication that the boyfriend was becoming jealous or upset in these little transactions, but we will not have long to wait to see how it all plays out. Just before a lunch I had made a Mike style risotto (made with half a pack of mackerel), the firm appointed by the house insurance to oversee and commission the redecoration work after the leak we had about a month ago piad us a visit. The firm itself is a family firm and the absolute model of professionalism, exuding a lot of confidence about how they are to engage in their stage of the process but one feature that I really liked to see was a sheet containing the colour photographs and contact details of each member of the firm with whom one might need to interact. What a brilliantly simple idea (the policy of the founder of the firm) and one that bodes well. In the fullness of time, I will have to pay a fairly hefty excess but that from point of time onwards, the all the repair and redecoration costs will be borne by the insurance company.

Last night, after Meg was safely put to bed, I was engaged in some tidying up and realised that my phone was not where it should be. Then followed one of the worst 20 minutes I should ever experience as my iPhone seemed to be irrevocably lost. Normally, when it is temporarily misplaced, I do not really panic but have a really ancient Nokia phone with oodles of credit on it which does not expire on the deal I have with Tesco PAYG mobile and so all I have to do is to phone my iPhone to locate it. But last night, try as I might I phoned and phoned and could not hear my iPhone anywhere. I knew I had it earlier in the day to phone my University of Birmingham friend and eventually located it to my evident relief but why had it not rung when I accessed it from my Nokia? The new iPhone16 has several unmarked buttons on it (three on one side and two on the other) and one of these at the top on the right left side is a ‘silent’ mode button which must have been inadvertently pushed when I was putting it in its case. I consulted the web for a diagram of the buttons whose function I had forgotten and Apple very (unhelpfully) explained that it had relocated the silent mode button to a place where you want to use it frequently. This may well be true when entering a meeting or some other public meeting place but if you put your phone down somewhere it can make it hard to find. As I could not get it to respond, my worst fears was that one of the carers had mistaken it for their own phone and taken it inadvertently out of the house because they each have a smartphone (which they themselves sometimes lose when they put it down inside the house) and sometimes an extra work phone as well. In fact, one of the young Asian carers had a similar experience when he had placed his phone on one of the curved arms to a leather armchair and it has slid down and out of sight. So now I know, I am going to be extra careful about this and the left hand button in particular. I had been up in the middle of the night as I had a little bout of indigestion and had taken some special indigestion relief and thought I would wait 15 minutes for it to settle and for the electric blanket to heat up before I returned back to my campbed besides Meg’s. I switched on the TV which was tuned to the BBC news channel and was in the middle of a Business report, focusing as it happened on the Spanish economy. What instantly took my attention was the opening shot of Segovia which is a little Spanish town to the north of Madrid made famous by the most magnificent three tier stone aqueduct, built by the Romans and still in use today. When I visited it with Meg and later with a colleague who had come out from England to try to organise a joint MSc degree, traffic still circulated round and under the bridge, but I think it has now been isolated from the traffic so as not to sustain damage from vehicle emissions. What is remarkable about the structure is that it is a prime example of magnificent Roman architectures built without cement and in such a way that the stones naturally abut with and cradle each other. But the wider news report was how well the Spanish economy was doing with a growth rate of 3% which was much superior to the German and the French (and obviously the UK) economy and all of this whilst a Socialist government is in power as well. I may tune into the BBC News Channel later on in the day to try to get the full report of which I only saw a half.

There are several newsworthy news items yesterday morning. Keir Starmer is off to an emergency meeting of Europeans in Paris to work out a response to the Putin-Trump attempt to carve up the future of the Ukraine without the Ukrainians (or even the Europeans) actually being allowed to attend the meeting. This seems so extraordinary and it may be that Trump will relent but I suspect his dislike for Europeans is so intense that Europe will continue to be excluded. Keir Starmer is actually seizing the initiative to some extent by saying that he is ‘ready and willing’ that British troops, even though they could be put in harm’s way, should form part of a buffer force between the Russians and the Ukrainians once a peace agreement of some sort is agreed. Germany, which is to have elections shortly, and France are in some disarray politically so Starmer could step in to the breach to provide some European military leadership which is an interesting concept in its own right.

Yesterday morning, I had to make a judgement call whether the conditions were such that I could Meg a push down the hill. In the event, I was guided by my iPhone weather app which said the temperature because of the wind chill factor would feel like -3° so I thought we should both stay at home, particularly as I had some phone calls to make. One massive irritation with which I have to deal was an uncollected direct debit as my contribution to Meg’s care which Worcestershire County Council failed, for diverse reasons, to collect last August and trying to do so now. One way or another this will have to be paid but it is a molestation I could well do without. Our chiropodist called around in the late morning performing services beyond the call of duty (such as a manicure of Meg’s hands) for which I was very grateful. She also let me have some of her special ointment for my hands (my fingers being full of cracks from the cold weather) which again was highly appreciated. In the afternoon, after a delayed lunch, Meg and I viewed a programme on the BBC iPlayer on Elizabeth I which was first broadcast the evening before and which I have saved for an occasion such as the afternoon when Meg and I have time to enjoy it.

Part of our daily routine is that once we have watched the 6.00pm news and had our evening supper, Meg and I sometimes switch over to YouTube for a piece of classical music with which to end off the day before the carers arrive at about 7.00am. Yesterday, we did this, and the first item presented to us was a speech made by the liberal US Senator, Bernie Sanders, on the floor of the Senate in the US Congress. This turned out to be one of the most powerful and riveting political speeches I have ever heard and it is very easily accessible across the social media. In it, Sanders attacks what he calls the modern oligarchs of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg who Donald Trump has brought into the heart of his new administration. The most controversial of these to date is undoubtedly Elon Musk who is heading up what is called the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ and he started off by sacking most of the staff or emasculating the whole of the US Aid budget which will result via the cutting of aids budgets and medical clinics to the detriment of, and perhaps even death of thousands, particularly in South Africa. Sanders makes a powerful argument that these three oligarchs now own as much wealth as the bottom half of American society, some 170 million people. He draws a parallel between these oligarchs and what was termed ‘the Divine Right of Kings’ which is how Americans were governed when they were a British colony and before the American Declaration of Independence and argues that many of the constitutional rights of Americans are being swept away. For example, the aid budget in the USA was set up by Congress and only Congress, not the President and even more an unelected American oligarch like Elon Musk, can alter its budget in this way. Elon Musk has called for impeaching federal judges following rulings that impeded the Trump agenda. Only 15 federal judges have been impeached since 1803. The process is typically reserved for severe offences, not policy disagreements. Experts warn that abusing impeachment power could diminish the federal government’s systems of checks and balances, so carefully enshrined and nurtured in the American Constitution and which I believe is part of the curriculum as part of their civic education with federal law requiring all schools receiving federal funds to include lessons on the Constitution often focusing on key principles like the Bill of Rights. Bernie Sanders has made the whole text of his speech readily available on social media so I may well download it and re-read it when I feel the need. It is an interesting question whether the British media will pick up on this speech as the attention of British politicians has (quite rightly) been focused on the security conference held recently in Munich and e fate of Ukraine. As I write, it looks as though some American and Russian officials (one hesitates to call them negotiators) are assembling in Saudi Arabia to decide the fate of Ukraine with the Europeans as a whole told they are excluded from the process. So, the political programmes that form the meat of Sunday morning (Trevor Phillips, Lorna Kuenssberg) may well be particularly interesting this morning.

After we had breakfasted, I was delighted to get a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend, where we enjoyed a coffee and some Belgian chocolate cake between us. We shared the concerns that we have regarding the present situation in the Ukraine and then I told our friend about the Bernie Sanders address to Congress I had heard for the first time last night. Although our political views are not completely aligned, I did show our friend a cognate video on YouTube in which Saunders gave essentially the same speech. Then the carers arrived and we had to terminate our little get-together sooner than was planned. Whilst hunting for some music on YouTube, I did come across an amazing video claiming that Canada was to join the EU. This is certainly wishful thinking but, as of few years ago, the Eu and Canada actually share a sort of border. There is a small rocky outcrop off the coast of Greenland and the two most proximate countries are Denmark (to which Greenland belongs) and Canada. Membership of the EU is confined to ‘European’ society but nowhere is the term defined so there is a case to be made that Canada is culturally a part of Europe. But there are too many legal and logistical problems to Canada joining the EU and it is not going to happen. But there is a lifeline in the form of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2016 which has still to be ratified by some members of the EU. But this is one avenue through which the EU and Canada can cooperate much more widely in an attempt to mitigate the Trump tariff wall being erected against Canada.

This winter has seemed particularly hard for us, although not characterised by snow but persistent cold. But this may well change as temperatures could hit 14C by the middle of the week after a period of persistent gloom. The Met Office said people could see sunshine return as soon as Monday in some parts of the country. It will come as a relief after an ‘anticyclonic gloom’ brought dull skies and bitter weather to much of the country. Parts of the UK could continue to see snowfall throughout Sunday evening and into Monday – but then things are starting to look up. When I was at work in the University of Winchester, we had an ‘inter-semester break’ at the end of January and so Meg and I sought the opportunity to seek out a little winter sun in Spain. Then, after retirement, we had a series of absolutely marvellous winter breaks in Salobreña in Southern Spain where we went on holiday for as much as a month. Saga holidays were offering four weeks for the price of three and the prices were amazingly cheap (and, in fact, so much so that Western Hotels found it impossible to provide the full board and accommodation when the whole package cost about £1,000 for the month from which we have to deduct the cost of the flights and the excursions) Some people had been going on holiday, one couple for 17 years and so there were a group of us who used to meet up year after year and we had many enjoyable hiking trips and trips out to the Alpujarras mountainous region which was adjacent as well as the cities of Granada and Malaga itself. I was reminded vividly of this when I discovered a series of photographs that I had taken on holiday and then put in some website space provided by much email host about which I had temporarily forgotten.

The word ‘jaw dropping’ is quite frequently used these days of the early days of the Trump presidency but yesterday was a day when it was well justified. The American Vice President, J D Vance, was addressing the European security conference, currently being held in Munich. Vance astonished his audience by telling them that the threat from Russia and China was as noting compared with the ‘enemy within’ As a reminder, Putin has invaded and captured swathes of territory in Ukraine, assassinated many of his opponents and sent agents onto the streets of the UK to assassinate Russian dissidents and murdering and maiming several UK citizens whilst he was at it. Vance was arguing that radical Islam was the real enemy within and pointed out that free speech in Britain was now curtailed, citing the case of the prosecution of an anti-abortion protester who was breaking the ‘cordon sanitaire’ put around abortion clinics to prevent intimidation. The UK was very much within his sights and a NewsNight contributor last night saw the hand of Elon Musk behind all of this. But this comes from the Vice President of the SA where several of their rabid supporters invaded the Capitol building at the time when Trump lost the 2021 election and were all subsequently pardoned by Trump and this means that the USA is in no position to lecture the UK on the rule of law. Not withstanding what Vance had to say, there is a growing recognition that Europe as a whole (and this includes the UK) will have to increase the proportion of defence expenditures from a planned 2.5% to at least 3.5% and this will probably be at the expense of the social security, health and education budgets which are themselves already massively under funded. t seems that it will be raining all of this morning, so it looks as though I had better give our walk a miss and, in any case, I feel rather ‘fluey’ and under the weather this morning so I may just indulge myself by following the political analysis on the TV and watching some of the recorded highlights from the rugby matches played over he last two weekends. It seems that Keir Starmer is in the queue to meet with Trump but he is well behind both the leaders of Israel, Japan and India so this is probably a reflection of how unimportant the UK is regarded these days.

After we had breakfasted this morning, it was raining cats and dogs as they say and there was no way that I could have pushed Meg down the hill and through the rain. Apart from anything else, I have felt pretty ‘fluey’ all day so I am dosing myself up on Cold and Flue Relief tablets every four hours. I did leave Meg for a few minutes whilst I popped out to collect a newspaper and, in the meantime, I have just dozed throughout the rest of the morning. After the lunch time carers had called and made Meg comfortable, I started to think about lunch. I fried off a red onion to which I added some peppers, tomatoes, pork mince and some onion gravy. I always enrich my gravy with a dollop of brown sauce and to this I added the baked potato and some beans. It turned out to be quite a tasty lunch and I was delighted to see that Meg managed her portion of it, albeit a little slowly, finishing off with a little chocolate dessert. Straight after lunch. I realised that I had not watched Thursday night’s ‘Question Time’ and this turned out to be pretty lively and interesting after the Trump interventions in the Ukraine. Then after a bit of a doze, I decided to see if I could watch the England France rugby match from last weekend – except that I fell asleep during all of the first half and then it was time for the carer’s afternoon call. As they hd some time on their hands, one of them mentioned that after his shift with the care agency was finished, he was going to go off on a go-karting session. They asked me about my games and past-times when I was younger and I recounted them to the story, that they have heard many times before, how at the age of 10 I was inducted into the craft of building a go-cart from a set of old pram wheels and how I did this for my son when he was at a similar age. They asked about my sporting abilities but I was pretty average about every sport that I played, whilst being a bit better than average at cricket and at gymnastics. I explained to the young male Asian carer that we see often who a keen player of cricket was also quite how we used to play cricket in the street using chalk marks on the lamppost for wickets. I also explained how we had a complex series of little rules to govern our games in the street – for example, a ball that landed without a bounce in a neighbouring garden was considered a ‘four’ whilst you could be caught out if the ball bounced off a wall but the catcher had to catch the ball in one hand. It was intriguing that the young male Asian carer reckoned they had the same one-handed rule when he played cricket in his youth.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, calls for creation of ‘armed forces of Europe’ amid fears of reduction in US support. This is interesting because other comment is to the effect that this is the harsh truth to which Britain and France (the two largest military powers in Europe) need to respond. I think there is a sinking feeling that whatever happens in Ukraine, it is probable that the ambitions of Putin to re-create a greater Russia will not end there and the states of Moldova, Belarus and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will be within his sights. There are massive parallels between the ambitions of Hitler in the 1930’s and Putin today- the political messages coming from what I have heard today is that the UK and the rest of Europe have no alternative but to stand up to the bully Putin with commensurate armed strength. There is a talk of n European army of some 100,000-150,000 being needed but to put this into context, the size of the regular British army is about 74,000 so the scale of the challenge facing Europe is not to be under-estimated.

The other night before I came to bed, the latest news from the Trump ‘blitzkrieg’ of policies was let loose on the world and, in particular, what Trump intended to do about the various tariff regimes across the world. Trump is announcing that he will deal with tariffs country by country and if a country imposes a tariff of x% on American goods, he will apply the same tariff in the other direction. The smidgeon of comfort in all of this for the UK is that the UK has no real trade imbalance with the USA (a slight positive according to one UK series, a slight negative according to the way the USA calculates things) and Trump is going to work his way down the list from worst offenders (probably China, Canada and Mexico) before turning his attention to the UK and the EU. But the devastating bombshell came from the Trump remark that he was going to treat VAT as though it were a tariff wherever it was applied, particularly by the EU. This either means that Trump has no understanding of what VAT is or how it works or is being completely disingenuous. Most EEC countries and the UK have a vat rate of about 20% with tax being paid and reclaimed at various stages during the manufacture of a good or service. The Americans, by contrast, levy a sales tax of about 6.6% just on the finished product at the point of sale. Now I understand that the way that international trade works is that the system of VAT due and reclaims is made in such a way that there is actually something approaching a level playing field between those countries that employ VAT and those that deploy a sales tax so that no one nation has an undue advantage in trade terms over another according to international trade experts. Now if Trump is asserting that VAT is a tariff, then he is in effect demanding that other markets let in USA goods at a price of 13.4% cheaper than the competition (20% VAT minus the 6.6% sales tax). The EU, in particular, which is in Trump’s sights, is desperately worried by all of this and it could be that a massive disruption to world trade and to subsequent GNP and all of its living standards is on the cards. Of course, Trump would love all of this as he has the mindset that the rest of the world is ganging up on the USA all the way from International Courts to the World Trade Organisation (the successor to GATT). Another Trump bombshell is the way in which Trump is, in effect handing the Ukraine conflict to Russia by saying that the Ukraine should not be allowed to join NATO and should cede the lands to Russia which are illegally occupied. If this is ‘The Art of the Deal’ (Trump’s infamous book) then it is a strange deal in which one hands to one’s adversary all that is being demanded even before the negotiations start. On the domestic front, we have Kemi Badenoch making an absolute fool of herself as leader of the Opposition, probably because her background research was faulty. She used Prime Minister’s Question to ask Keir Starmer why Ukrainian refugees were being allowed to use a scheme to enter Britain designed for those fleeing Afghanistan? All that Keir Starmer had to do was to agree with her that the decision was wrong as the policy, and the legal framework supporting it, has actually been put place by the last Conservative administration. Some critics of Badenoch are saying that her ‘research’ is clutching at Twitter posts or right-wing press headlines without doing any proper checks on the veracity of the information. Already most Tory voters think she is a disaster and one of the worst leaders of the opposition it is possible to have.

Fridays are the days when our domestic help calls around so I do not normally go out with Meg when she calls. It was also a day when we receive a visit from our Eucharistic minister from the local church, and we always after the little service exchange a little gossip about the things happening in our lives. Our friend seems to have had much more than her fair share of close friends and some relatives who have passed on and evidently this happens as the years roll by but we trudge on. Tow carers called around for Meg’s lunchtime call and it was pleasing to see that Meg was much more alert in the late morning and we managed to get some tea and some fruit juice inside her. Meg always consumes all of her porridge and her share of a banana so any fluid we can get inside her is a bonus. We lunched on fish fingers which I cooked in the oven part of our microwave and complemented this with some broccoli and some cooked tomatoes (which, incidentally, is meant to be quite good for you) Incidentally, I gleaned the following information from the web on this subject. Cooked tomatoes are healthier than raw tomatoes, offering a wide range of health benefits. Tomatoes are rich in lycopene, an antioxidant that is more easily absorbed by the body when the tomatoes are cooked. Cooked tomatoes also contain higher levels of beta-carotene and other nutrients, such as vitamins A, C, and E. Lycopene, a powerful antioxidant found in tomatoes, is released more easily when the tomatoes are cooked. Studies suggest that consuming cooked tomatoes may help reduce the risk of certain types of cancer, such as prostate cancer. Cooking tomatoes can also improve their flavour and texture, making them more palatable for some people. Additionally, cooked tomatoes are often easier to digest than raw tomatoes, making them a good option for people with sensitive stomachs. In the afternoon, Meg and I watched the remainder of the Mozart ‘Magic Flute’ which had some stunning set design and costumes, courtesy of the Paris Opera House and then we were delighted to see, even though we were not going out today, that the clouds had rolled away and we were getting just a little burst of sunshine which we do not seem to have witnessed for days now.

No doubt, in the Ukraine that are severe worries about a massive sell out if they forced to give up lands to Russia and eschew Nato membership as the price for peace. I had not realised that Czechoslovakia was forced to yield the Sudetenland (largely German speaking territories) to Hitler. Germany’s occupation of the Sudetenland was a crucial event in 20th-century history. Indeed, it was a key step on the path to war. Furthermore, it demonstrated the futility of trying to appease a tyrant bent on reshaping the world order in accordance with his perception of reality. So we almost have a case of history repeating itself. But Keir Starmer appears to be standing firm in his support of the Ukraine including membership of NATO which puts him on a straight collision course with the Trump-Putin axis, if I can call it that.

Last night, I received a particularly welcome text from our Italian friend down the road whom we happened to encounter, albeit briefly, yesterday on our trip down the hill. She wondered if she might come round this afternoon to pay is a social call which invitation, I was all too eager to accept. I cannot now remember if she has seen the latest addition to our range of furniture – the latest leather sofa which I bought and is decorated with a throw with the Harry Potter shield, escutcheon and motto, the carers claim as their own as they always seem to love sitting on it. When the carers were new, I used to see if they could translate or at least make a stab at translating the motto embroidered into the throw which is the official motto of Hogwarts “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus,” four words in Latin that translate to ‘Never tickle a sleeping dragon. ‘While this is solid life advice, this seems odd to make the official motto of a school. My idea as to why the founders chose this as their motto is that they chose it as an inside joke. There are four words in the Latin motto, and each word represents one of the founders of the school, and/or the House. The whole elaborate joke is because J K Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, stated that she always found it boring and wrong that so many schools in our world have vague mottos that sound impressive but have no practical advice to offer to their students (‘Reach for the stars’, for example) so she wanted to substitute something that was at least vaguely useful. We would say, of course, in these days and times to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ Of course, I shall try this out on our Italian friend when she pays us a visit and her Italian might help her make at least some progress in translating it. Part of my getting up routine is to go into the kitchen and make myself the obligatory cp of tea with which to wake myself up and I also enquire of ‘Alexa’ (smart speaker) what the weather is going to be like during the day. Yesterday, I was informed that it was 1° and would settle in the range between 0°-4° which sounds suitably wintry. As this blog has been going for several years now, I decided to look back exactly a year only to discover that I had written that ‘today is a beautiful spring like day’ and the same was true the year before that as well, but I could not bear to go back yet another year. In Spain, there is often a period in mid-February where the weather is known as ‘febrero loco’ (crazy February) when the weather is often quite mild and unpredictable, and a period of quite fine and sunny weather is fairly common. Thursday is my shopping day and the sitter is one of the young (male) twins who always gets on very well with Meg and vice versa so this always puts me at my ease when I am out of the house for about an hour and a quarter.

As one gets older, I suspect that there is a tendency to suspect that ‘things were better’ when we were younger but then things have moved on since our youth. Nonetheless, I heard a statistic yesterday that made me think. The recall population – the number of prisoners sent back to jail after release – has more than doubled in the last decade and now accounts for around 15% of the total number of people behind bars. If people re-offend, then they should evidently be back in gaol. But evidence is building up that ex-prisoners are being sent back to gaol for sometimes administrative reasons, such as missing an appointment with a probation officer – or even not reoffending at all but not showing the probation officer sufficient respect. That massively overworked service is finding it easier to manage its workload by just sending people back to gaol. Andy Keen-Downs CBE, CEO of Pact (Prison Advice and Care Trust), said: ‘These alarming new figures are yet another indicator that reveals the scale of the challenge facing the prison and probation system. Steadily rising recall rates over the last decade have been a significant factor in driving the prison overcrowding crisis that faced new ministers when they took office last summer. Those who pose a danger to the public should go back to prison. But too often, people are recalled on minor technicalities or because they don’t have the support they need – they may have missed an appointment or have nowhere to live. We should consider returning to the system that required a court to recall someone to prison rather than an overworked probation officer.’ So I ask the question whether re-offenders should be returned not to gaol but to what used to be called bail hostels. Inspectors concluded that there are not enough hostels in the right places, and this reduces the chance that rehabilitation and resettlement work will be effective. Many residents are placed away from their home areas. There is a general shortage of places, leading to more people being sent to wherever a place is available. A number of residents have spent years in prison and their rehabilitation needs are complex, and in most cases better addressed in the community in which they intend to live. This is particularly true for women. So, the more general question that I ask myself is that in the past, there used to be half way houses e.g. approved schools for delinquent children, convalescent hospitals for the not very ill, as well as the bail hostels themselves. It seems that these half-way houses are disappearing rapidly in our society and there seems to be very much an ‘all or nothing’ in our hospitals, schools and prisons. Should our national policies be thought about anew. To return to the case of the prisoners who reoffend, then they constitute about a third but the other two thirds (10% of the prison population) could surely be monitored in bail hostels rather than returned to gaol for years on end?

Our Italian friend had a sudden domestic emergency this afternoon which needed a plumber so to our mutual disappointment, she could not call around. But we spent the afternoon watching a production of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ from the Paris opera house. I do not always attune to the Masonic overtones of ‘The Magic Flute’ but some of the singing and magic-like scenes are enthralling.

I recall not being a particularly happy bunny when got this morning as before I went to bed the previous evening, I consulted the carers schedule and saw that we were due for a 7.00am start which means getting up at 5.00am. Well, it would have been 5.00am if I not shut off the alarm and immediately fallen asleep for another 35 minutes which makes me running late in the morning. When the couple of carers did arrive, they brought along with them a ‘shadow’ i.e. newly recruited worker who has to observe minutely what the experienced care workers do and then they themselves will be out on the road in a few day’s time. These new workers often look frightened to death because there is so much to learn and to retain for each individual client and they have to desperately absorb as much information as they can. In theory, they should be sent out with a more experienced worker to get some good hands on experience – I often tell them that if they leave the care profession, they could ways get a job as a ‘continuity producer’ whose job it is to ensure that on a film set or on a TV studio, everything is in place as it should be for future visits to the location and they have to have incredible memories for where things are in each location they visit. We have no particular commitments today and the weather seems no worse than yesterday do I suspect we shall just collect our newspaper and then see how the day unfolds. But do we do go back up the hill to watch Prime Minister’s Question Time although this often proves to be an irritating anti climax for us. Whilst we were on our way down into town, we actually did bump into both our Irish friends and also our Italian friend who carried on walking with us as far as Waitrose. Having picked up our newspaper, we did progress onto the High Street where I managed to buy some much needed items from the cosmetics store as well as getting our weekly cash out of the ATM. Once we had returned home, I often make some soup for both of us. This starts off as a packet soup which I then mix with some boiling water and top up with full cream milk and finally eat up in the microwave. I gave Meg her little portion and then settled down to watch the remainder of Prime Minister’s Questions with the cup of soup in my hand. Then an altogether too familiar calamity overcame me which, alas, is all too common these days. After the 5.00 am start and then pushing Meg up and down the hill, I was just starting to enjoy my coup of soup when I fell sleep spilling the soup all over myself, my trousers, the chair and the carpet. All of this required a change of clothing and a massive clean-up effort of the soup on the carpet. I now know that I need quite a lot of water to get the stain of the carpet and then masses of kitchen paper to soak up the water, After all of this, I did have a little doze and started work on lunch which seemed to take forever. This was because I was preparing a type pf pasta for Meg and curry for myself which involved quite a lot of dicing of the vegetables (onions, peppers, tomatoes) supplemented with an onion gravy, diced fruit, sultanas and a dollop of yogurt. By the time it was prepared, Meg was fast asleep so I put Meg’s own dinner in the microwave for later whilst I had mine (and fell asleep again) I think it is the combination of the 5.00am starts, pushing Meg up and down the hill and my own general exhaustion level which is contributing to this sleepy level. Bit when the carers came around for the late afternoon call Meg seemed wide awake and laughed and joked with the two young carers which is always wonderful to see.

The really dramatic news which came through late in the afternoon is the fact that Putin and Trump are in touch with each other and are going to start negotiations immediately to end the war in Ukraine. We already know that the American defence secretary has already forcefully given his view that the Ukrainians at the very least should give up the lands in Eastern Ukraine that they have already occupied and will insist that Ukraine never joins Nato. The American defence chief as also told the Europeans that the entire focus of the American military will be away from Europe and towards the Pacific and the China region, Putin and Trump are each to meet in each other’s country and it looks as though a deal will be done over the heads of the Ukrainians and the other Europeans. At the end of the day, Putin will have gained some extra territory and stopped the eastward expansion of Nato but at the expense of several thousand Russian soldiers and nearly three years of warfare. There have been hour long calls between Putin and Trump and between Trump and Zelenskyy and the BBC is reporting that the whole of this endgame is turning out to be a diplomatic triumph for Putin. It is more than a year since an American president has visited Russia and, no doubt, both Putin and Trump will bask in their respective mutual glory.

I do not follow the local news very closely but there was a news item about the immensity and the complexity of the railway engineering now that the HS2 work near Birmingham is gathering pace. Apparently viaducts galore have had to be constructed and whole site to the east of Birmingham now occupies a space the size of three spaghetti junctions for which Birmingham is famous/notorious. This phase of the work is now considered unstoppable but what a pity that the while HS2 project had not been considered as a ‘T’ in which Manchester and Leeds were connected first and then the line was to be driven southwards. Most the economic work conducted on the construction of high speed lines indicates that in the last analysis they tend to benefit the capital cities most in the countries in which they are located.

We all knew that the Gaza peace deal was on a knife edge and then Donald Trump steps in to say that all hell will break loose if the peace process does not proceed, after a hiccup, next weekend. It could signal the utmost game of brinkmanship or it could be the end of the deal, but I am sure that the Qatari and Egyptian negotiators will be doing their utmost behind the scenes to keep things on track. There is a certain asymmetry which I have noticed in the reporting so far. Israeli society has been shocked by the poor physical appearance of some of the recently released Israeli hostages. But given the massive disruption to food supplies in Gaza and the hardships endured by the Palestinian civilian population, it would not be surprising if the Israeli hostages were last in the queue for whatever food was available. But what is the condition of the Palestinians released from ‘administrative detention’ in Israeli gaols? The answer is that we have no information because no media attention has been focused on them. Meanwhile the domestic debate as now moved onto the committee stage of the ‘Assisted Dying’ bill where its sponsor, Kim Leadbeater (the sister of the murdered Labour MP) is putting forward an amendment suggesting that the view of an ‘expert panel’ should replace the role previously allocated to a High Court judge. To some this is a sensible compromise to meet the views of critics whilst to others it is an essential weakening of the previous safeguards. The Committee stage is going to be broadcast live this afternoon so I may dip into the debate on the Parliament channel to assess the state of play. Although I am broadly in favour of the principles of the bill, I would still worry if I were an MP of either party whether of the Bill becomes the law of the land, there might not be a loosening of the criteria to include more ‘social’ criteria as has actually happened in Canada. Some provisions are in place, including a requirement of having two independent healthcare providers confirm that the patient is eligible before their request is approved. More than 320,000 people died in Canada in 2023, and 15,300 of those deaths – about one in 20 – were medically assisted.

As the weather is a little milder today than yesterday, then a trip down the road to meet up with our friends for a coffee is certainly on the cards. So we made our way down to Wetherspoons and the wind was nowhere as strong as was forecast so we got down the hill in plenty of time to meet up with out two friends, one of whom I had not managed to see for a week or so. We all have certain weak spots in our anatomy/physiology and mine happens to cracks which I get on my fingers and heels during bouts of cold weather. My fingers have been particularly affected this winter and by the time the cracks had accumulated to five or six, I was driven in desperation to plaster them all up. I do sometimes put a hand cream and white cotton gloves overnight if I am particularly badly afflicted but this year I have made do with fabric plasters (which come off in the washing up water) So I did wear a pair of gloves down to town today and it made pushing the wheelchair a tad easier up the hill on the way back home. As we were close by, I did a quick tour of the Salvation Army charity shop and returned home only to find the care workers on the doorstep waiting for me – but they were a little early as it happened. I let one of the care workers try a little of my risotto which I was going to prepare for our lunch today and then the two regular care workers left and the ‘sitter’ stayed behind. Several days ago, I noticed that the BBC were showing our favourite film which is ‘Doctor Zhivago’ which Meg and I first saw in about 1968 and we have seen several times since. In fact, Meg was fairly similar in appearance to Geraldine Chapman who was the actress who played the brunette Tonya in the film (whereas the blond Lara was played by Julie Christie) Zhivago was, of course, torn between the two women but after being separated from them both by the events of the Russian Revolution eventually caught sight of Lara whilst he, suffering from a weak heart, struggled to get off the Moscow tram and run to catch up with Lara. But his heart gave out just before he managed to meet up with her again and he died in the street. The film best seen in a cinema has some stunning scenery and is full of emotional intensity and the performances of the stellar cast are all magnificent. I did not feel like watching the film on my own a couple of days ago but I started watching it again today whilst Meg was semi-awake and I explained some of the plot to the young carer who was doing her sit for us – she always has the option of getting on iPlayer and finishing off at home if so inclined. Late in the afternoon, I got a follow up call from the Speech and Language therapist who saw Meg a couple of weeks ago and was pleased to be able to report to him that with the aid of the dinky little coffee cup I had bought from a charity shop, I was managing to get a little more fluid into Meg these days.

The Trump tariffs are liable to hit the UK fairly hard as we export some steel and even more aluminium to the US. The Canadians of course are one of the world’s biggest producers of aluminium as it has so much accessible and cheaper hydraulic power by reasons of its geography to process the metal. It looks as though in the short term, if not just a bargaining counter, that the tariffs will prove to be inflationary as producers pass the costs of their increased prices to their eventual customers. In the long run, no one particularly benefits from these tariff walls, but the Sky News analysis does show that the trade imbalances in metals is enormous. China does not export a lot of steel or aluminium directly to the United States. A succession of presidents and Commerce Department rulings have already imposed many tariffs on steel from China. Tariffs have also gone up lately on Chinese aluminium. Just last September, President Jo Biden raised existing tariffs on many Chinese steel and aluminium products by up to 25 percent. But China dominates the global steel and aluminium industry. Its vast, modern mills make as much of both metals, or more, each year as the rest of the world combined. Most of it is used within China’s borders, to build everything from high-rises and ships to washing machines and cars. Yet lately, China’s steel and aluminium exports are on the rise because its economy is struggling, sapping domestic demand. Many of these low-cost exports have gone to American allies like Canada and Mexico, which in turn export significant shares of their own more expensive output to the United States.

For those who have got used to their weekly fix of marvellous rugby these winter weekends, there is now a fortnight’s rest between the next round of matches. But one of the broadcasters is going to broadcast a highlights match next weekend for us rugby junkies so I must look out for this. I also think that the England-France game is going to be broadcast again in an extended highlights programme, possibly available via YouTube so now that the tension is out of the game and we know the result, this might well be worth a viewing as well. Just as I as typing this, I got an unexpected and very welcome text from the Asian lady from South Africa who used to live around the corner but has now moved away but only to Droitwich I believe. Now that she has moved, the text indicated that she would still like us to keep in touch so I have given her up-to-date details of Meg’s state of health and it might well be that we can enjoy an afternoon cup of tea together. Talking of Asian ladies from South Africa, Anne and I got very friendly with an Asian lady from South Africa who was a single parent but who had great technical skills and who was the manager of the reprographic unit in the Scraptoft purpose of De Montfort University. It was she who first introduced me to some of the finer arts of how to make a professional looking document e.g. of a conference presentation and these skills I have not forgotten but indeed deployed quite a lot when I was in the business of producing documents when I was employed at the University of Winchester. A particular weakness of mine to which I do admit is that I do like to produce professional looking presentations and take pride in doing so but for some people, this feeling just passes them by.

The morning brought a succession of windy showers, so much so that my weather app detailed the weather as feeling like -5° and so I made the decision not to venture out with Meg. I am not a natural watcher of daytime TV but I thought Meg would quite like to watch some of the ‘Pilgrimage’ programmes often shown by the BBC on Sunday’s. But before I got there, the iPlayer gave me the chance to resume watching the biopic of Aretha Franklin called ‘Respect’ with the lead played by Jennifer Hudson, as near an lookalike as it was possible to be. Before she died in 2018, Aretha herself chose Jennifer Hudson to play her in Respect. A producer who was a close friend of Aretha opined ‘They both sing with a lot of emotion…they both sing with a lot of range and power. It’s really hard to compare anyone with Aretha, though. I think the good thing about Jennifer is that was Aretha’s pick to play her. … There was a lot of discussion about a lot of people, but Aretha was adamant that it be Jennifer.’ What I found compelling was that the ‘Queen of Soul’ as she came to be dubbed had a troubled background and personal life. Her life seemed to be permeated by over-controlling men, be they fathers, managers, husbands (sometimes one and the same) or producers. But out of this strange chemistry came such extraordinarily powerful music which is why, I suppose, this music has the kind of qualities that it has.

We had an appointment with one of the community physiotherapists who turned up at 3.00pm this afternoon, together with a trainee – altogether, they spent an hour and a quarter with Meg and it proved to be a really useful visit. First they examined Meg’s legs as far as they could whilst she sitting in her specialist chair. Then we utilised the hoist to get Meg onto her own bed in the bedroom part of our Main Lounge from where they could make an even more detailed assessment of Meg’s legs and muscle tone. I did actually learn quite a lot from this visit (including the differences between ‘contracture’ and ‘tonicity’ the former of which is much more difficult to treat) The physio managed to get Meg’s legs bent to a better angle i.e. straighter than they have been for some time so the physio and I agreed a range of practical steps that I (and the carers) can take to keep Meg’s knees and legs from deteriorating. All of this is really excellent news because it means after this diagnosis that there are some practical steps that we can take both to keep Meg comfortable and more-or-less pain free but, more importantly, stop conditions deteriorating. The physio said that she would make contact with the care agency manager who frequently puts himself ‘on shift’ so that she and he can together have a practical session. Having been taught the ‘lessons as it were, the care manager can then incorporate things into the care plan and then the good care for Meg can cascade its way though the system. I spent some time with one of the younger carers talking about life in the Army which he is going to make his career in a year or so but at the moment he is making considerable progress in the part-time roles he carries out within the army.

There are even further madnesses coming from the mouth of Donald Trump. He has announced that once the Palestinians have removed from Gaza that he would ‘own’ and that there would be no right of return. This is almost a reverse of the position in modern Israel where I believe that anyone of Jewish descent can claim a right of abode within Israel but the obverse occurs in the case of Palestinians whose land it is. When Donald Trump says that if he is to ‘buy’ Gaza or even own it, then this raises the question of whose land it is to sell.It is certainly contrary to international law for Israel as an occupying, not to say conquering, power the right to sell Gaza to Donald Trump but, of course, Trump has scant regard for any legal framework, let along an international one. To add to this bluster, we have the case of tariffs of 25% applied to all steel entering the country and whether this applied to UK steel is, at the moment, unclear apart from the fact that Trump has declared ‘all steel and aluminium’ which must include UK steel.

Yesterday afternoon was dominated by the two rugby matches in the ‘Six Nations’ competition. The young and inexperience Welsh team gave away a plethora of penalties to the Italians who beat them in Rome to a not unexpected victory. But the much anticipated match was between England and France with French flair matched by English determination to win on their home ground. At half time, the scores were level and then the French pulled away during the second half. The French could normally have been expected to extend their lead and nearly did so but made some unexpected handling errors (including Dupont) by dropping the ball as they approached the English line. England took the lead briefly by one point later in the half only for the French to score a typical and audacious try about five minutes before the end. Then England through massive determination and some determined play scored literally a last minute try which put them one point behinds the French and the subsequent conversion enabled them to win the match by a single point. As one of the English players said n a post-match interview, it was not a perfect performance but they got there in the end. The French themselves admitted to ‘oopsies’ as they neared the English and must rue the fact that although they may well win the championship in the end, they will have been denied the Grand Slam. To say that this match was on the edge of your seat stuff is no exaggeration and will have given the English team considerable heart and satisfaction after their loss against Ireland last weekend. We now have to wait a fortnight for bodies to repair themselves before the competition resumes. The morning starts off very early because the care workers are scheduled to arrive at 7.00am, two hours earlier than the day before and so set the alarm on ‘Alexa’ to 5.0am only to turn over and go back to sleep as soon as I had turned it off. But when the two care workers did turn up, they were a couple who had worked together for years (sixteen years, since they were teenagers) who I had not seen for months. So I needed to do a quick update on Meg’s condition but a lot of this they knew by reading the care notes. They are due back for the lunchtime call so I am very pleased to this duo again.

I learnt this morning that all of the parts of the two crash aircraft (a regular plane and a helicopter) have now been recovered from the bottom of the Potomac river in Washington, DC and the wreckage is being analysed for clues. But already we know that the helicopter was flying at about 100′ above its recommended height and a key safety system had been turned off, so things are looking black for the military in the subsequent investigations. Yesterday was rather a strange morning because we normally look forward to the visit of our University of Birmingham friend on a Sunday morning but this Sunday we knew that our friend had another engagement. So after breakfast, I busied myself with some housework, food preparation and other jobs that tend to get done weekly but Meg has been in a deep doze for much of the morning. For lunch,I took a one half of a frozen ham joint I had put by in the freezer and prepared an onion gravy whilst the green veg I was going to have with it was some young spinach leaves (actually, I suspect, baby beet) But in time-honoured fashion, I fried an egg in a tiny little saucepan which I purchased as a ‘one egg’ saucepan some time ago and this always makes the spinach taste delicious. When the care workers arrived for their late morning call which became an early afternoon call, there was not much to do and they always ask if there are any other household jobs that need to be done. On these occasions in the middle of the day, I have no hesitation in asking them to take a load of washing straight out of the drier and to fold it neatly for me. This they do with consummate skill and at an incredible speed but they always tell me that they do so much of it on their own domestic lives, that they are past masters at it (which I can well believe). I always have to check the times of the next two carers along and anticipate getting an update on the birthday party which the two young male carers, having attained the age of 18, enjoyed the other evening. The afternoon was filled with watching the Scotland vs. Ireland rugby match.

Meanwhile, the Baltic states have switched to the European power grid – ending Russian dependency. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have announced they’ve synchronised their electric systems to the European power grid, completing a complex switch. The move has been planned for years, and came the day after severing energy ties to Russia and its ally Belarus. They cut cross-border high-voltage transmission lines in eastern Latvia – just 100 metres from the Russian border – and handed out pieces of chopped wire to bystanders as keepsakes. The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, herself an Estonian, called the switch ‘a victory for freedom and European unity’, while Latvia’s President Edgars Rinkevics wrote on social media ‘we did it’. The three ex-Soviet countries – all staunch supporters of Kyiv – stopped buying power from Russia following Moscow’s invasion in 2022. But they had been relying on the Russian grid to control frequencies and avoid outages. The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert after power, telecom links and gas pipeline outages between the Baltics and Sweden or Finland – all believed to have been caused by ships dragging anchors along the seabed. There are hints that some kind of deal might be being worked out between Putin and Trump to end the war in Ukraine but more might be revealed in the week ahead.