So today we enter our Sunday morning routines and had got ourselves all up and ready to watch the Lorna Kuenssberg program starting at 9.00am on BBC1. We were due to meet with our University of Birmingham friend later on in Waitrose but we received a call indicating that his plans had to change (as did ours yesterday) so we needed to move onto Plan B. We decided to go to the park which we have not visited for some time now so after we had picked up our copy of the ‘Sunday Times‘ from Waitrose we made for the park. Things seemed to be a little colder when we first arrived in the park which seemed to be teeming with both dogs and children on their bikes. We made for our usual bench, drank our coffee and ate our comestibles which warmed us up a little. Then we made for home, still having a bit of the morning left to us. Putting on the TV, we stumbled into the second half of a program called ‘Pilgrimage’ and we thought, at first, that this was one of the many programs illustrating a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. Actually, it turned out to be an Italian pilgrimage with Rome as its destination but quite interesting for all that. The pilgrims turned out to be all faiths and none and, en route, they received a blessing at the hands of a local priest which even for the non-religious the pilgrims found quite inspiring. I suppose this type of program is best broadcast on a Sunday morning when people turn to this type of uplifting TV but we left this before the end because, just after midday, BBC2 was broadcasting a 1940’s version of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice‘ We had lunch in the middle of this transmission but it was interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the party of Mr Darcy was played by Lawrence Olivier and I must say that he made a rather dashing Darcy. But also the producers had introduced various parts of dialogue which I am sure faithfully have their origins in the original but with which I was completely unfamiliar. At the same time, various scenes with which we are familiar from more modern productions were omitted completely so it made viewing an interesting but different experience from what we might be led to expect. After we concluded the film, we decided to eschew the TV for a bit and to listen to some music so whilst Meg dozed and I started to blog, we listened to a production of J S Bach’s ‘Matthew Passion‘ playing pleasantly in the background.

The ‘Sunday Times’ today is devoting quite a lot of space to the machinations on the Tory Right wing which is comprised of a variety of groups all of whom seem to dislike each other heartily. What has prompted this soul searching is a mysterious but comprehensive poll which seems to indicate that at the general election, whenever it comes, the Tories faces annihilation. The only thing that seems to unite these warring factions is an intense dislike of the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and there is talk of replacing him before any election. One is reminded of the expression ‘rats fighting in a sack’ when faced with all of these machinations but the truth may well lay in a focus group discussion that was featured on the Lorna Kuenssberg program this morning. This is that the Tories are becoming almost universally disliked whoever happens to be the leader (with the possible exception of Boris Johnson, for whom a minority still yearn) The constant attacks on each other and internecine warfare seem so far removed from the concerns that people have about food prices, mortgages, jobs, energy bills and the like. In other words, there is a massive disconnect between what appears to be happening at Westminster and the issues that the average voter feels are affecting people in the round. This rubs off onto the Labour Party which does not seem to be seen as a saviour of the nation – rather, the electorate seems desperate to have a change of government but with no clear consensus as to what should take its place. My very first boss in the civil service when I was aged about 17 and seemed to be completely non partisan rather observing political parties as though they were football teams. His view, expressed in the rather pithy manner, was that ‘one lot have had a go so let the other lot now have a go now’

This is the time of year when, with the days startling to lengthen somewhat, thoughts turn perhaps to the Spring. In our little walk in the park today, all the vegetation had that somewhat bleak, mid-winter feel about it because we still have the month of February to live through. But it is always encouraging to see some of the first hints of better things to come when one espies first the snow drops, then the crocuses and perhaps the first shoots of the very earliest daffodils. When Meg and I used to walk down to the park every day, which we did at the height of the pandemic, these were the little things that one noticed that used to gladden the heart a little but we tend to whizz past in the car these days as the walk all the way down the park is beyond Meg these days. But at least, we have a wheelchair which has proved to be an absolute boon to us and we use it constantly, keeping it permanently in the boot of the car. I find, though, that being the person who pushes the wheelchair, one looks at pavements in a slightly different light, always on the look out for example for a dropped kerb to cross the road, for example, and rough patches of pavement to avoid. I have been very impressed over the last few weeks when I have been helping Meg into and out of the car and into her wheelchair, how kindly members of the public have proved to be, often enquiring if they can offer us some assistance (which, at time, I am always happy to accept)

Meg and I really slept in this morning and woke up quite a lot later than normal. Whether this was because we were up quite early yesterday morning, I cannot say but we really had to get our skates on to get ourselves up, washed and dressed and then a minimum of breakfast before we set forth for Waitrose. There we made contact with our three Saturday morning regulars where our conversation ranged over some of the most unlikely topics. I thought I would amuse our reminiscencies this morning by wondering aloud what were our earliest memories of the kinds of machines used to issue bus tickets when we first used buses as children. When I lived in Harrogate, the bus company was known by the rather quaint name of the ‘West Yorkshire Road Car Company’ and the bus conductors wore a box type arrangement in which you pressed one of a series of horizontally mounted levers to issue a pre-printed ticket. But when I went to school in Bolton in Lancashire, I was intrigued by the arrangements that they had in place there. Here the machines were essentially a series of horizontally mounted disks atop a little box with a handle. When one was paying one’s fare, the dial was moved to the correct position, the handle was rotated on a couple of turns and a freshly printed ticket was issued. I believe that there are some avid collectors who like to collect machines of this type if only for old time’s sake.

After we got home, we prepared a Saturday midday meal of quiche, complemented with some sprouts and chestnuts. Then Whilst Meg had a little doze, I started a little play around on my newly acquired ThinkPad for which I suspect there is going to be quite a steep learning curve. This machine is quite well supplied with ports and after a little bit of experimentation with an SD card, I learnt that this machine has an SD cards slot so I thought I would order myself a brand new one to use as my regular storage (although I will take backups of it onto the hard disk every now and again) I didn’t want to spend too much on an SD card that did not work but I have used SanDisk cards before and found them to be very reliable, so I ordered a 32GB card for the princely sum of £8.00 from Amazon. This card came preformatted and pops into a little slot on the side of the machine where it is completely invisible in normal use. Then I transferred all of my blog files over onto it (all 1400+ of them) from my website and this was completed in just a few minutes. So now I have used up less than 4% of the available disk space and as a back of an envelope calculation, it will take me about a century for me to populate the rest of the disk space so somehow I think that 32GB is way enough for my present needs. As things stand at the moment, the total of all of the data files that I need to back up on my main computer system are about 17GB so I am sure that I do not need more storage soon. I did wonder how reliable this form of storage was and most of the information on the web reveals that a flash disk is good for about 10,000 writes before the disk starts to degrade. Also, this kind of storage uses some technology to spread the data over the disk to minimise the wear on any individual cells and SanDisk themselves have a little symbol on the back of their packaging that indicates a life of 10 years. I think that one can register a card with SanDisk to activate a warranty claim in the fullness of time so I will investigate this a little later.

There has been quite an extraordinary court judgement in the US where Donald Trump has been ordered by a court to pay over $80 million to a woman whom he sexually abused in decades gone by. Actually, Trump was convicted in an earlier court hearing and the latest was just to assess the amount of damages that should be awarded. The lawyers for the woman in question had only asked for $10 million but the jury had taken the view that far more needed to be awarded as Trump had deliberately and on several occasions kept on trying the trash the reputation of the woman who had sued him. The bulk of the $83.3m comes from the jury’s conclusion that, in defaming her, Mr Trump acted ‘maliciously, out of hatred, ill will, spite, vindictively, in wanton, reckless or wilful disregard of Ms Carroll’s rights’. Of course, Trump is fulminating on his own social media sites and will be appealing the judgement. But he will have to pay a bond into the court which he will forfeit if the appeal is lost. There is an extraordinary part of the American political scene at the moment where the more Trump is pursued through the courts, the more it feeds into his diatribe that the liberal establishment, and particularly the Democrats, are just out to stop his candidacy for the American presidency. His avid supporters happily make contributions to support Trump’s endeavours but I wonder what kind of accountability follows this donated money. Although Trump consistently argues that the Democrats are chasing them through the courts, nothing could be further from the truth. This prosecution was a private, civil prosecution and nothing to do with legal moves that the Democrats may have initiated after the riotous assembly which forced their way into the Capitol building some two years ago. Although nothing will persuade the avid Trump supporters that their man has committed any crimes, the judgments of middle America of uncommitted voters will prove to be critical.

Today started off bright and early as Meg’s carers turned up an hour earlier than we had anticipated so we had rather a rush around to get ourselves up and ready. Today is the day when our domestic help calls around and it is always nice to see her. But the weather today is bright and clear today so a trip to Droitwich sounded like a good idea. But then the parishioner from our local church called around as she often does on a weekly basis so we decided to change our plans. On the recommendation of our domestic help, we set off for a large pub with lots of parking that does some magnificent coffees and midday meals but although we got fairly near to the outside of it, it did not seem like the pub she had recommended so we abandoned it and came home. Nonetheless, the journey was not entirely fruitless as we managed to get a copy of our daily newspaper from a local Spar shop and also picked up a couple of nice cushions from our off-centre Age Concern shop which is always stuffed full of bargains. Then we progressed home to enjoy the fish meal that we usually cook on a Friday and prepared ourselves for a quiet afternoon. We filled our afternoon with a certain amount of TV (watching a wildlife program), some music courtesy of YouTube and, to round off the afternoon, we accessed some of ‘Yes, Minister‘ which is still vailable as a download on the BBC i-player. It is said that this program and its successor, ‘Yes, Prime Minister‘ was always a favourite of Margaret Thatcher whilst she was our Prime Minister. There is quite a back story to this TV series which I believe to be fundamentally true. This is that most of the episodes depicted had more than a kernel of truth about them i.e. they were not constructed out of thin air, as it were. Rather, Marcia Williams (very close confidante of Harold Wilson who became Lady Falkender once enobled) and a policy wonk whose name I have forgotten, used to meet with the script writers each week. They would then ‘spill the beans’ or in other words recount the essence of the story of a particular escapade which the scriptwriters then used to form the basis of their script. Two episodes spring to mind, one being when Sir Humphrey has to cede his (privleged) office to the prime Minister’s senior political adviser. The other episode was the story of a visit to an Arab capital where the consumption of alcohol was outlawed- the British, though, had a secret stash hidden away in an adjacent tent and would burst in upon the minister indicating that there was an urgent message from the likes of ‘Mr Johnnie Walker‘ who had to be seen immediately and so on and so forth.

The airwaves have been dominated today by the judgement of the International Court of Justice where the South African government had laid a charge of genocide against Israel. The full case may take some years to actually hear and for a definitive judgement to be announced. But today’s ruling is fundamentally to decide whether there is a case to answer. The South African government were not successful in their plea for an immediate ceasefire but most of the judgement of the Court was to enjoin upon Israel that it had to take immediate steps to ensure that a genocide could not actually take place and to make a report back on the progress made within one month. This is quite a stern ruling and the judgements were generally of the order of 15 cases to 2 (including an Israeli judge) against the Israel government. The Israelis are saying that this judgement is absolutely outrageous and are arguing that Israel has been subject to discriminatory treatment at the hands of the Court. But it is going to be interesting to see how this plays politically because the pressure to achieve a ceasefire must surely increase. It could be that the case that only Israeli public opinion could be the final factor in this conflict as Netanhahu is massively unpopular with all shades of Israeli opinion except the extreme/hard and religious right.

Sky News is reporting tonight on the latest Brexit story. This is that ‘new Brexit border controls will leave British consumers and businesses facing more than £500m in increased costs and possible delays – as well as shortages of food and fresh flowers imported from the European Union. The new rules are intended to protect biosecurity by imposing controls on plant and animal products considered a medium risk. These include five categories of cut flowers, cheese and dairy produce, chilled and frozen meat, and fish.’ I heard a representative of the flower industry saying this morning that these new controls could be exceptionally arduous for their business and it is just one more twist to the Brexit saga. There was another story today that the Canadians were playing ‘hardball’ in a trade negotiation with the UK and, of course, these agreements can often take months if not years to negotiate and to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. In fact, leaving the European Union (EU) added an average of £210 to household food bills over the two years to the end of 2021, costing UK consumers a total of £5.8 billion. And to make matters worse, this impacts much worse on low income rather than high income households as food costs are a higher proportion of the budget of the poor.

This has been a very interesting couple of days for a variety of reasons but first things first. Whilst we were in Worcester yesterday, we took the opportunity to pick up another late Victorian captain’s chair, very similar but not identical in style to the one we picked up in Birmingham just before Christmas. This latest chair will complememt beautifully the one bought earlier and although evidently not from the same ‘stable’, the two of them form an interesting pair in our hall. I had negotiated a special price about three quarters of the price I paid for the first one as this exemplar had a little flaw in a decorative band that runs around under the main back of the chair and has straight, rather than turned legs. Nonetheless, the seller (who was raising funds for his ‘Men in their Sheds’ project) accepted my offer and his address was very easy to find but it was just around the corner from an acupuncturist that Meg used to frequent in Worcester whn we first moved here sixteen years ago. Once I got it home, I gave the chair the ‘grade 0000 steel wool and beeswax’ treatment which should gave the chair a patina that lasts for several years. I have put a couple of matching cushions on it that I just happened to buy the other day and they make the whole ensemble in our hallway very attractive in my opinion) But as well as this purchase, another parcel arrived to which I had been looking forward for several days. I am evidently on the email list of a firm that specialises in reconditioned laptops and, several days ago, I received an offer which I felt I could not resist as it was a ThinkPad machine with a pretty modern processor, a 500GB hard disk and 8MB of ram, complete with Windows 11. Last night, after Meg was in bed, I decided to just open up the parcel I had received during the day with the intention of just unpacking it and then plugging it in to make sure it was not DOA (dead on arrival) Upon unpacking it, I thought that the model and screen size was larger than the one I had ordered and indeed, I had been supplied with a different but markedly superior model to the one that I ordered and paid for. (I wonder of the supplier had run out of the model which he had advertised and had one of these machines available and thought that his customer would not object to a superior model) So I have finished up with a laptop built by Lenova to IBM standatds and officially classed as a ‘workstation’, which I can well understand as it was pretty heavy and I would not like to lug it around very much on a train or what have you. The new model has a superior processor clocked at a higher speed (an ‘i7’ rather than an ‘i5’ for the cognoscenti), Windows 11 Professional and the MicroSoft 365 suite of applications. As you might imagine, one thing led to another – after switching it on, the first thing that Windows 11 demanded was the password to link in with our router and I managed to get this installed at the second attempt. You then needed to uilise a MicroSoft account but I had a copy of Outlook credentials installed on my main system so these had to be resurrected, complete with passwords. Then, of course, I had a mouse to install instead of using the inbuilt trackpad but this proved to be relativey simple. So what started off as a simple little session ended up as being up for about an hour and half later than I would have normally have gone to bed whilst I played about with a new toy. I had already got the two utilities I am using the most (a text editor for which I had paid a subscription years ago and which the Swiss form involved supplied me with a brand new and up-to-date copy once I had interrogated my email program and found an order number from years ago, and also my favourite FTP transfer program.) So there is quite a big learning curve for me as Windows 11 has an entirely different interface and user experience from the Windows 7 on my previous ThinkPad and I suspect that I am going to need the faster processor and CPU power given the increased functionality bundled within Windows 11)

Today, we decided to do our weekly shopping when the Thursday carer had called around so I did a lightning tour around the big Aldi store in the centre of town, thinking it was going to be quite a light week but nonetheless doing something like a normal week’s shop. After we had got this unpacked, it was getting quite late so we made do with a light lunch of mushromms and ham on toast (which we found delicious and enjoyed greatly). In the afternoon, Meg and I decided to watch ‘Schindler’s List‘ which was first broadcast on BBC2 a couple of nights ago and was transmitted in anticipation of World Holocaust day which is tomorrow, Friday. Meg and I watched this with a combination of fascination and horror and whilst we were both generally broadly aware of the Schindler’s List story line, there were nonetheless some dramatic scenes to add twists to the story. Meg was able to concentrate upon this for the whole of the afternoon and it was one of those films where it was difficult to tear oneself away.

Today the pair of carers turned up for Meg very promptly and we had scarcely woken up before it was time for their ministrations. They are always so cheerful despite having to dash from pillar to post every morning and we were commiserating over a colleague who had just crashed and written off her car which she was going to have to replace. Carers are probaly only paid the minimum wage so to have one’s car written off when it is essentiual for you to get from job to job must be a trouble indeed. After we had breakfasted and digested some of the day’s news, we set out on the road both to collect our newspaper (our regular newsagent not quite having got his act together with the new owners taking over) and to fill the car up with petrol. You would have thought this was easy but most of the pumps that allowed easy access to the fuel tank opening on the passenger’s side seemed unaccountably to be out of action. But we got filled up after a certain amount of waiting around and then made for the Methodist Centre for our mid morning cup of coffee and teacakes. Once inside, we were greeted warmly by someone we know well from our own church and for whom it just happened to be their rostered day serving the tea and coffee. Then we saw our 90-year old friend that we helped in a minor way to celebrate her birthday on Friday last and another opportunity for a good chat. We also got into conversations with a gentleman who had been recruited into the Army Apprentices Corps which was based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. As residents of Harrogate, we got used to seeing waves of young 16-17 year recruits turn up at the railway sation and then be whipped away to their barracks elsewhere in the town. We wondered whether we might have passed each other in the street before we ever knew each other. The Methodist cafe was particularly full today because in an adjacent hall there is a type of ‘Balance and Keep Fit’ session organised in several classes on a Wednesday morning and we just happened to coincide with a period where one class ended and the other was about to start, so this always ceates a crowd at change-over time. Meg and I left before 12.00pm which meant that we get home in time for ‘Questions to the Prime Minister’, which is, of course, the usual knockabout and over-rehearsed stuff. But a senior Conservative has come out into the open and publically criticised Rishi Sunak’s leadership, arguing that the Conservative party is facing a meltdown in the general election which surely must come some time this year. The Conservative party really is in panic mode right now and althouugh no other MPs were ready to thrust their heads above the parapet and argue that Rishi Sunak should be replaced, it is rumoured that quite a lot of Tory MPs privately feel that both they and the party as a whole are doomed.

This afternoon, we made a lighning visit into Worcester to pick up a parcel and found the distance both closer than we thought and the whole journey comparatively easy. But we had to endure roadworks at both end of our journey in both Worcester and Bromsgrove which adds to the length of the journey. But having made our trip it was good to get back in plenty of time for the wheely bins to be wheeled to the end of our drive. This is a weekly job which I must prefer doing in the daylight whilst I can. This afternoon, we accessed YouTube and watched a concert put on initially by a Dutch group called ‘Voces8’ They specialise in baroque choral pieces but they also are strong on modern master pieces by Faure, which tends to start off the concert. When we access YouTube, we tend to start off with Faure’s ‘Cantiques de Jean Racine’ but the YouTube algorithm chooses a slightly different selection of works each day, which suits us greatly. This afternoon, for example, we found ourselves listening to some of the choruses from J S Bach’s Matthew Passion, which we greatly enjoyed.

The news has come through today that the Royal Mail service is under investigation to determine its future role and funding. The backdrop to this story is that the Royal Mail is losing money and the number of letters has dropped significantly from about 14 million items a day to about 7 million. Evidently, people are using email and a variety of social media so it is not surprising that with its business halving, the letters part of Royal Mail is now in a dire state. One suggestion is that to balance the books, it may be necessary to move to three deliveries a week. But nothing much is likely to happen in the very short term because the major recipient of postal services are the elderly and the thought of offending this key part of the electorate before an election in the UK is anathema. But any new government will have to take some very unpalatable decisions – as first class stamps now cost about £1.25 the scope for further price rises may well be limited. Meg and I are both part of the generation where we worked on the Christmas post in a variety of locations – Meg in Staffordshire and I worked in Harrogate, Leeds and also Manchester delivering the post. I have vivid memories of bacon butties being cooked on a shiny steel shovel over a brazier in a sorting office in Leeds in 1966. But these opportunities were denied to students when preference was given to the unemployed and now the number of extra staff taken on by the Post Office at Christmas time must be very small.

Today being a Tuesday, it is my Pilates day if everything works out all right. So Meg and I got upselves up, washed, and breakfasted catching up with some of the news on the Sky News channel. We left in plenty of time for our Waitrose visit but first made a trip to an ATM to get out some weekly cash. Visits to an ATM are a bit more problematic these days because there is no free parking immediately adjacent to one unless we make a trip to the Morrison’s supermarket on the far side of the town. But we collected our money and then treated ourselves to coffee and a snack in the Waitrose cafeteria, meeting one of our usual number who has recently been bereaved. We swapped stories about the sequelae that follows the death of a near relative such as getting multiple copies of a death certificate and then engaging with the various agencies such as banks, building societies and government ministries to get everything regularised. I can remember on the death of Meg’s father, I went along to register the death and got into the office of the local registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. Having run off a death certificate, she asked me if I would like more some more and I blithely replied about six which the registrar than ran these off at a touch of a button and asked for for £7.00 for each one. I gather the death certificate is a lot more than this now but it seemed to be a very easy way for the registrar to make some money for a cash-strapped local authority. My only other details of a dealing with a registrar was when Meg and I were Census enumerators for the 1971 census. As social science students, we had knowledge of the census as well as research methods and we were briefed by Manchester’s chief registrar. We asked him if he had ever recognised anybody coming before him as having been married before. He was certain he had recognised the person in front of him on a few occasions but in the absence of any definite proof of bigamy, he just had to go ahead with the proceedings with the people in front of him. The 1971 Census was interesting to administer because in my patch, I got both the retired professor of surgery who had performed a minor operation on my neck in 1967 (but missed the lump he should have been taking out by at least an inch and told me to ignore it for the rest of my life – which I did.) I also enumerated a mosque which had taken over an old Anglican church and I didn’t know that the inhabitants were there then until the last moment and then they invited me in for a meal. I also had in my patch a hippie commune who were very reluctant to put down all of these ‘Head of Household’ nonsense (as they saw it) but instead I successfully negotiated with them that the members of the commune all put themselves on the census form describing each other as ‘co-spouse’ of each other. What the census coding authorities made of all of this, I will never know but in our briefing, it was acknowledged that at times we would run into tricky situations and under these circumstances, we were enjoined to get as much useful data as we possibly could on the grounds that some information from an address would be better than none at all. Meg and I quite enjoyed our period as Census enumerators and with the proceeds bought a souped up Ford Anglia, painted in BRG (British racing green) and with wide wheels/types. This vehicle cost us £150.00 and after we had successfully house hunted in Leicester (at quite a distance from Manchester), we sold it about six to nine months later for £125.00. It really was the most enjoyable little car and Meg and I have very fond memories of it.

My Pilates session session went OK and I left Meg in the care of a Peruvian care assistant whilst I attended my session. Upon my return, we made our normal Tuesday lunch of fish cakes and microwaved vegetables and then settled down to watch a D H Lawrence film of ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy‘ This moved at the most glacial pace and had themes that can be found in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Women in Love and Sons and Mothers. We broke off before seeing the film to its conclusion to have out afternoon repast and whether she shall resume it tomorrow or not is an open question.

The Post Office scandal investigation rumbles on. Tody, there was further examination of the investigators who were charged with examining the deficits that appeared in the sub postmaster’s account with the Post Office. It looked as though at least some of these investigators looked in various parts of the house to try to find the ‘missng’ money and, needless to say, in no case were they successful. One investigator was a witness today and when asked whether or not they had found any of the money would not answer the question. Several of the sub postmasters have died with the presumption of guilt still hanging over them. The general response of the investigators is that they were just ‘following orders’ but one has to ask why the middle managers in the Post Office never asked their investigators to track down what had happened to the so-called stolen money.

This morning we were expecting our normal couple of carers just after 8.00am but only one turned up and the other, probably delayed by horrendous traffic jams, we did not see at all. So I got Meg ready practically single handed and then we went to have breakfast. We knew that we had a few things to sort out on the Bromsgrove High Street, the principal of which was to hand in a bundle of clothes for which Meg no longer has a use and was going to find its way into the Cancer Research charity shop. We popped into a few of the charity shops that are adjacent to each other at that end of the High Street and finished off buying some cushions, a pair of which are almost an exact match for the new leather armchair I had acquired just before Christmas and were too good to miss. As we popped into and out of various shops with Meg in her wheelchair, we found that people were incredibly friendly and accommodating, holding doors open for us and generally being as helpful as they could be. I reflected upon the ‘kindness of strangers’ upon which I do not rely but always fully appreciate when it occurs. I also bought a couple of little brass owls which, after a Brasso treatment, now sit alongside the brass owl which sit on our front shelf and could almost be her chicks – the styles happen to be incredibly similar. We are always pleased to get back in time to watch the ‘Politics Today‘ program on BBC2 at midday and were interested in seeing a journalist, I think from ‘Private Eye‘, absolutely making mincemeat of his opponents. I cooked a dinner in which I was augmenting some sprouts (laced with a little syrup in the cooking water to reduce/eliminate a sprouty smell around the kitchen) with some packet chestnuts I happened to see in the supermarket the other day which went with yesterday’s mince and onions and a baked potato. Meg often says that I make her portions too large, which I probably do, but then she promptly eats it all up which must be a good thing. Last night, I made Meg and I a Spanish omelette with onions, peppers and a little garlic served on slices of butttered toast and it was delicious. It was a dish simple enough to prepare but I have not done it for quite some time and I might try it as a main course midday meal sometime, served with a baked potato and perhaps a little salad.

This afternoon, we finished off watching the final part of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles‘ which was poignant, but also a little disappointing. This is because the film ended rather abruptly with the arrest of Tess at Stonehenge and did not include some of the final scenes which I remember well from the novel I read a few years ago. We had just about got ourselves ready, after our afternoon cup of tea and biscuits, to watch a D H Lawrence film on Prime video when our chiropodist called around, as planned. Although I had got the appointment on our planning board, I had momentarily forgotten she was due to call around this afternoon but, of course, she is always welome. This week we have hardly any appointments on our weekly schedule so nothing to disturb our equilibrium. Last night, though, we could hear the winds and the storms raging over most of the country and the winds actually reached 99mph in a Scottish location. Although there are no power cuts in our part of the world, I am sure that falling trees and garage roofs that are blown away may well be resenting all kinds of hazard in various parts of the county. No sooner do we get over the aftermath of one of these storms but another seems to be hard on its heels, all propelled across the Atlantic by a jet stream in the high atmosphere which seems to be the source of these succession of storms.

After Donald Trump’s success in Iowa,many political pundits are trying to understand his appeal, despite the numerous potential convictions hanging over him. Much of the analysis revolves around the nation that ‘Trump is a businessman who puts America first and will make America ‘great again’ So the belief in a ‘strong man’ is not too far away from the motivations that lead people to adore fascist leadets such as Hitler and Mussolini and makes one wonder whether the roots of democracy in the US are exceptionally shallow. Many liberals are of the view that having got the Supreme Court packed with his own nominees, a newly elected President Trump may bypass Congress and rule by presidential order (or ‘presidential decree’). All of this is going to prove extremely problematic for democratic leaders in Europe of whatever political party. One cannot ignore the fact that Trump may well have been re-elected but there are a host of practical problems, not least in the operation of Nato and the war in Ukraine which is going to make complete cooperation with the US very difficult. But those with long political memories may recall that Harold Wilson maintained reasonable relationships with the Americans whilst not getting involved in any show of support for the Vietnam war, which proved to be a quagmire for the Americans in the long run. And there are some analysts that are saying that ‘sensible’ Americans will still collaborate in matters such as security and intelligence sharing whatever the inclinations of the actual president in office.

Today we enter our normal Sunday morning routine which means getting us both up, washed and dressed and sitting down in front of the Lorna Kuenssberg show at 9.00am. This morning was one of the first through which I have not actually dozed through and the big political interview this morning was with Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, who was explaining to us the threat that Russia is offering not only to the Ukraine but the rest of Europe as well. Once this had concluded, we were contemplating a visit down to Waitrose when our University of Birmingham friend phoned up inviting us down for a coffee later on in the morning. Our friend and I got into one of our usual conversations (how degrees were classified, the various problems we had faced in the examinations process) and perhaps we had been talking quite loudly and excitedly but our conversation was overheard. Eventually we were joined by a person who was a fellow academic, had worked in the Open University Business School and also, for several years, at the CNAA (Council for National Academic Awards). Before the polytechics had their own degree awarding powers and eventually became part of the generation of ‘new’ or ‘modern’ universities, the CNAA was the body that awarded degrees. The thoroughness of the documentation demanded and the rigorous inspection standards over the course of a 1-2 day visit helped to ensure the quality standards of the ex-polytechnics. In many cases, too, we were cognizant of the fact that the CNAA helped to keep standards high by insisting on a certain degree of staffing which had to be wrung out of the grasp of the Polytechnic authorities and in this way, the CNAA became the students’ best friend ensuring that their qualification had academic credibility and that the colleges which came under their aegis were resourced at least to a minimal level. When the new universities acquired their own degree awarding powers and after the demise of the CNAA, the various directors of the polytechnics were delighted not to have to comply with increased staffing demands enjoined by the CNAA. So we had a very interesting conversation with the lady who joined us who seemed to have quite a lot of strings to her bow (e.g. a postgraduate degree in Music) so we invited her to come along and join us next Sunday when we can carry on with our trips down memory lane and our oft-repeated refrain that standards were so much higher when we were working and in charge.

I always look forward to an in-depth read of the ‘Sunday Times‘ to get the background to the stories that have surfaced during the last week – in particular, because of the revelations in the Post Office scandal I was expecting some detailed reported of the various transgressions both in Fujitsu and the Post Office itself. But I was to be disappointed because whatever analysis there was proved to be thin in the extreme. Instead many more column images were devoted to the machinations that lay behind the Rwanda vote in the House of Commons this week. I suspect that all of this is due to essentially lazy journalism. To investigate the wrong doings of large corporations requires good and persistent investigative skills as well as an examination of a mound of documents. But how much easier just to sit in a bar and talk over ‘who said what’ to an MP who is providing the information on a non-attributable basis. It rather reminds me of the war correspondent(s) who used to file stories such as ‘we had to negotiate our way through the alley ways of the city whilst sniper bullets whizzed past our ears’ whereas the truth of the story was that they had never left the confines of the bar in a safe hotel and got all of their information second-hand.

There is an interesting story emerging from the other side of the Atlantic. One of Donald Trump’s Republican challengers is Nikki Haley who is an ex US ambassador to the United Nations. She was well behind Trump in Iowa but is reported to be ‘within touching distance’ in the forthcoming primary poll in New Hampshire. She has indicated that she might only appear if Trump does likewise whereas Trump himself seems to have confused Haley with Nancy Pelosi the ex Democrat Speaker of the House of Commons. So Nikki Haley is publicly questioning the mental competence of Donald Trump and who knows how this might play out in the more liberal political environment of New Hampshire. The point here is that Trump appears massively ahead but in the primaries, things can change very rapidly as candidates gain (and lose) momentum. However, at this point it does look as the centre of American politics is evaporating. There was an ITV programme on Trump recently that revealed that many illegal immigrants were being ‘dumped’ upon the Democratic stronghold of Chicago. As these migrants are housed in makeshift shelters of plastic sheeting and random materials acquired from anywhere, so the predominantly poor (and black) citizens of Detroit are turning against Baden. The president is blamed for having to cope with these migrant ‘camps’ which is eroding the core support for the Democrats. We have seen hints of this policy played also in the UK where asylum seekers have been known to be visited upon poor communities (eg the Potteries) where there is little power to resist. This is one of the reasons why UKIP and the associated Brexit vote was so strong in poor communities such as Stoke on Trent.

Today, Saturday, the weather forecasters are telling us that it is the end of the cold snap so the weather should be considerably improved – but I must say that there was quite an icy wind to add to the windchill factor so the weather still seemed quite cold for us. We made for Waitrose knowing that some of our friends would not be there but we still made contact with the third so we had a pleasant coffee and chat together. Then it was a case of a quick whizz around the shop followed by a cooking of the Saturday lunch (some left over chicken heated up and enhanced by a thick onion gravy which seems the story of my culinary life these days) After lunch, Meg and I had set ourselves a little treat which I did not know how it is going to turn out. On BBC2 earlier in the day they were showing ‘The Pure Hell of St. Trinians‘ and I hoped that we get this on catch-up which we did. We did not know whether this was a sequel to the original ‘Belles’ of St. Trinians made decades ago or the much more recent remake where the schoolgirls were a lot more knowing, not to mention saucy, in keeping with the spirit of the 1970’s or 1980’s. This film was actually a black-and-white film made in the 1950’s I would imagine and was faintly both amusing/ridiculous in equal measure. We watched most of it before deciding that we had had enough of this and thinking that we would turn our attention to other things. One of the little rituals of life is that we wait until 4.00pm and then enjoy our afternoon cup of tea (but Meg is indulged with a chocolate biscuit). We have some things lined up for later on this afternoon and are enjoying a few minutes of relaxation with ClassicFM. They have Alan Titchmarch as a presenter of Saturday afternoons and it is always quite a pleasant selection of classical tracks (not the ‘tumpty-tum’ type music or the Straus walzes which fills the airwaves at less popular times) Then we watched a little more of the Thoams Hardy film of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles‘ until it was newstime and we left the final quite dramatic scenes for another day. Incidentally, one of the closing scenes in the film shows Tess and her husband cavorting themselves on the stones of the monument of Stnehenge. I, too, when I was on a cycling holiday organised by my school in about 1958, did the same but of course no member of the pubic can get anywhere near the stones of Stonehenge these days (and for good reason)

The news from the Israel:Gaza conflict seems as dire as ever. There is now a direct conflict between the US on the one hand, which is still advocating a 2-states solution, and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu who is publically rejecting the notion of a 2-state solution. Israel has a very ‘pure’ form of proportional representation and I think I am right in sayng that the extreme right wing National Religious Party (or whatever its successor is nowadays) has had a place in every Israel government since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. So here we have a form of PR in which a very small tail is wagging a very large dog. I used not to believe in PR but I do so these days but I think it has to be thought about carefully. One solution to the ‘Israel’ type problem is to have a constitutional arrangement to make sure that extreme parties of either the right or the left cannot be invited into the government unless they reach a certain trigger amount (which I believe that Germany does, of about 5%) Another quite innovative solution is to ensure that he party with the most votes/seats is allocated an extra block of seats so that the resultant government has a reasonable working majority. This is to try to ensure that you do not have a situation in which, in a tight electiopn won with only a handful of seats, that certain maverick MPs do not use this ‘fractional’ bargaining power to exert a hold over the direction of policy.

I think the political class is starting to absorb some of the lessons of the Fujitsu/Post Office scandal. Now that it has emerged that Fujitsu witness statements, used by the Post Office as evidence with which to convict some of their own sub postmasters, were ‘doctored’ (i.e. incriminatory evidence removed), I think that it was Fujitsu staff themselves who doctored their own evidence but it may have been the Post Office staff themselves and I shall have to wait for a good detailed piece of investigative reporting (perhaps in the ‘Sunday Times‘ tomorrow) to ascertain where the blame arises. Evidently, the removal of evidence from a witness statement is perjury but can the state ascertain who are the people who thus perjured themselves – after all, they could have retired a decade ago. And if individuals cannot be identified, can ‘perjury’ be laid at the door of a company like Fujitsu itself? None of the precedents (e.g. the perjury committed by some of the Maxwell newsapers in the phone hacking scandal) bodes well for the future.

Today was meant to be a degree colder than yesterday but the weather station in Pershore, Worcestershire registered a low of -9.7 degrees yesterday which was one of the coldest (if not the coldest) in the country. The temperature here when I went shopping yesterday was -6 degrees and today it was -5 degrees but it actually felt colder. Fortunately, my windscreen protector had done its job and the car was relatively easy to put to rights before we set off this morning. The carers arrived on cue but one of my regulars had had an accident, probably weather-related, and so another carer was sent in her stead. Three of Meg’s carers have suffered five accidents in the last fortnight which must have put a lot of pressure on them as they have to dash from appointment to appointment and are given hardly any travelling time, the situation being exacerbated of course by road works on the one hand and rush hour on the other. Our domestic help calls around on a Friday and she is always a joy with whom to chat but we were quite keen to try and get into the Waitrose cafeteria by about 10.30. We were particularly pleased to have done so because we thought that there was a 50:50 chance that one of our regular friends (the chorister one) was celebrating her 90th birthday today. We were particularly pleased to give her a birthday card where I had managed to find one not liberally adorned with glasses and bottles of alcohol which, I suppose, reflects the fact that the card designers imagine that you spend your birthday boozing all day long. But we had also bought a little gift for our friend which we saw in Droitwich yesterday and she was very pleased to receive it, after ripping off the layers of protective bubble wrap and wrapping paper in which I had sellotaped it. They say, in popular parlance, that it is ‘better to give to receive’ and it certainly gave me a great deal of pleasure to able to able to hand over a gift to our friend who had achieved the ripe old age of 90. In fact, whilst she was bobbling around the shop, I had a word with the counter staff and left a tenner with them to provide our friend with a donated coffee when she came to order but the counter staff insisted on giving me back my money and giving my friend whatever she wanted ‘on the house’ (that is Waitrose for you)

This afternoon, Meg and I watched in real time as the Japanese attempted to land their ‘sniper’ module on the surface of the moon. We watched the descent, monitored through instruments in real time, and it did appear that the craft had indeed made a soft (i.e. not a crash) landing on the moon’s surface. But the Japanese are still trying to establish contact with their craft to establish its exact orientation – it could, for example, have toppled over or slid down a slope. For reasons that are not entirely clear the Japanese were attempting to land on a slope (was it a crater lip or something?) but it looks as though we may have to wait a couple of hours before the Japanese and the rest of the watching world may be able to ascertain exactly what has happened. Immediately after touchdown one would have imagined whoops of delight from the scientists monitoring their craft from Japan but there was instead an ominous silence, so we shall just have to exercise some patience for a little.

Some further news has dribbled out of the Post Office scandal enquiry and from the revelations today, it looked as though Fujitsu itself was editing out some of the negativities about the software (bugs and the like) before the Post Office were informed. But Fujitsu are admitting that the Post Office knew of the presence of bugs and even the ability of Fujitsu to enter the individual accounts of sub postmasters and informed the Post Office of this. So the Post Office may well have been prosecuting in the knowledge that the software was problematic. From this distance, it appears to be hard to ascertain where the major degree of culpability might lie but we have unfolding before us two large corporations engaging in behaviour which protects their own interests and seeks to pass the blame onto the ‘little’ men i.e. the sub postmasters. One wonders how one starts to calculate whatever compensation might be due – what is the price to be put upon the fact that the aged parents of sub postmasters will probably have died thinking that their sons and daughters were guilty of a fraud? Similarly, the children of the sub postmasters would have had their lives blighted by the reaction of school friends not to mention the fact that their parents had lost their livelihoods. Just to add fuel to the flames of this story, Rishi Sunak to appease his (rabid) right wingers over the Rwanda bill is intimating that he may appoint 150 additional judges to fast-process claims of asylum seekers – but no such offer of additional judges seems to be available to offer an acquittals or compensation to the sub postmasters. The two little bits of news may not have connected in the public’s mind but a half-decent opposition should have been shouting it from the roof tops.