Yesterday morning, I got up rather later than I had intended because I indulged in watching a late night offering on Sky Arts. Normally, I would not stay up late, but Sky Arts does not have a catch-up facility like  BBC or ITV so it is necessary to stay up late or record the programme. The programme was entitled ‘Mozart’s Women’ and was good but not that good. Strangely, they did not give a rendition of Cherubino’s ‘Voice che sapete’ which is sung by the love-sick teenager to the Countess in ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and is incredibly well known. So today I am rather running to catch up with myself but my son is coming round to see me for half an hour after his swimming session and then I have Pilates in the middle of the day which I try never to miss. Last night, there was also a Panorama programme on the Post Office scandal. Although I watched several of the cross-examinations live, last night’s programme was hard hitting and very well researched. It focused on several individuals who, when the enquiry does report, really should be prosecuted and probably spent a considerable time in gaol for the misery they have caused. The programme fingered, as it were, an ex-Chairman of the Board, a lawyer, a computer expert, a civil servant, an ex-managing Director, and the senior manager in charge of bringing prosecutions. The most egregious example of wrong doing was Venables, an ex-Managing Director who conveniently ‘could not remember’ receiving several emails informing her of the problems exhibited by the Horizon computer programme and the fact that many prosecutions could be fatally flawed as it was known that accounts in the Post Office branches could be altered manually by Fujitsu, te Japanese software company who were responsible for writing and maintaining the code of Horizon. Venables, who incidentally was an ordained Church of England priest, personally removed from the privatisation prospectus a sentence which indicated that the Horizon system might not be as robust as claimed. Withdrawing relevant information from a prospectus is plainly against the principles of commercial law but the government and the Post Office Board were desperate to ensure that a privatisation could go ahead. If Venables had allowed the critical sentence to remain in the prospectus, then the whole privatisation would probably have to have been pulled, and a false prospectus was promulgated to keep the privatisation on track. I think it is unlikely that any of those responsible individuals will see the inside of a gaol. The enquiry as a whole has to report next year and then there will be a delay whilst the Crown Prosecution service considers the findings of the report as a whole. Prosecutions will be years down the line and lawyers of those guilty can argue that with the passage of time, it will be hard to establish legal liability. A fine is always possible and perhaps a judicial ‘slap on the wrist’ but I doubt whether the jail sentences inflicted upon sub-postmasters will ever be applied to their culpable masters and seniors.

The day was a quiet one today but I had Pilates in the middle of the day which I was keen to attend as I missed the session last week. I found a couple of extraordinarily interesting health articles in ‘The Times’ in today’s issue. The first of them was exploring the link between the menopause, subsequent hormonal changes and the fact that Alzheimers is twice as common in women as in men. The crucial intervening variable seems be a certain amount  of ‘grey matter’ in the brain which has been shown to shrink in the case of menopausal women and to have shrunk in Alzheimer’s patients. This grey matter seems to affect cognition, emotion, depression and more besides but evidently the science is still evolving in this area. The second article was an examination of the relationship between gut health and cognitive functioning. This is an area of science which some have dubbed one of the last unexplored frontiers of science – we have known for years that that there are brain-like cells in the gut and there are some subtle communication processes between them. Here again, the science is still evolving and we are left with a situation in which we are dealing with probabilities and not certain certainties. So it is possible to have a healthy life style, be careful over food and drink and to exercise regularly and still develop a cancer (although the possibility is reduced.) Conversely, it is possible to have the unhealthiest lifestyle, diet etc and not to develop a cancer of degenerative condition (although again, the probabilities are decreased) The point is that articles in ‘The Times’ are usually very well researched and referenced back to recently published scientific reports which gives these accounts a degree of credibility.

After the Greenland debacle, it appears that Trump may be backtracking on some of his more outrageous policies. The local head of the ICE operations in Minneapolis has removed from his post (after the two shootings which can probably be classified as murder) and Trump has agreed that Federal and local law enforcements officials do collaborate on a joint report into the ’causes’ of the unrest. The citizens of Minneapolis are taking to the streets in their thousands day after day and so the Republican party as a whole may be coming to experience  that the ICE operations were conducted without any of the degree of professionalism or indeed training that was required. So it has possible that the USA has arrived at a turning point but at a tremendous cost to its social fabric and institutions. Back in the UK, a massive storm {Chandra} is sweeping the country and flooding is reported to be quite widespread. Most of the South of England as well as the Pennine district of the North appear to be the worst effected. However, the West Midlands seems to be relatively unaffected which makes a change as Atlantic storms often seem to track across the middle pf the country. The Scandinavians have an expression that ‘there  no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing’ but this implies that one can protect oneself completely using the appropriate winter clothing. But what appears to be a major source of danger to the general public is the combined effects of wind and rain in which trees and large branches fall upon power lines, block roads and railway tracks and occasionally even cause death and injury by falling on top of cars. It may be that under the impact of climate change, warmer air is carrying potentially more rain and, on a personal level, it seems that even on quite short journeys one is more likely to see evidence of surface flooding and local drains and culverts unable to cope with essentially quite moderate degrees of rainfall.

When I awake in the morning, I have a routine as I drink my early morning cup of tea, put on ClassicFM and start to compose some of the blog to be published on the following day. As I write at the moment, they are playing the Mozart clarinet concerto first heard when I was about 13 and in bed suffering from ‘Asian ‘flu’ which was then sweeping the country and I have never forgotten it. The sheer exuberance of it is calculated to lift anyone’s spirits on even the worst of mornings. I am conscious that I often write about the ‘bad’ things that are happening in America but last night’s news was jaw-dropping.I was following the eminent ex-NewsNight journalist, Emily Maitlis, who was giving an interview to James O’Brien on LBC but picked up in a Sky News video clip. She had discovered that hundreds and probably thousands of completely undocumented flights are taking pace after suspects are scooped off the streets by ICE agents, taken to deportation centres and then transported by plane to hell-hole prisons in El Salvador without ever coming before a court in the USA. Many of these are USA citizens but probably the ‘wrong’ skin colour and hence ‘liable’ to deportation. A description of these prisons was found on the internet and ‘hell-hole’ is an accurate description. El Salvador’s ‘hell-hole’ prisons, most notably the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), represent a, extreme, maximum-security system designed to detain tens of thousands of alleged gang members under severe conditions. Opened in 2023 by President Nayib Bukele, the facility is part of a massive crackdown on gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, intended to be a permanent, ‘living nightmare’ for those incarcerated. Located in Tecoluca, CECOT is designed to hold 40,000 inmates, making it one of the largest prisons in the world. The facility features 11-metre-high concrete walls, electric fencing, and is designed to be inescapable. Prisoners sleep on bare metal bunks without mattresses or sheets. They are subjected to constant surveillance, no outdoor time, and no communication with the outside world. Reports suggest that once inmates enter, they are not expected to leave, with some officials telling incoming detainees they will never see sunlight again. International observers and reports, including a November 2025 Human Rights Watch report, describe the environment as a site of torture, abuse, and potential war crimes. Inmates have reported being packed shoulder-to-shoulder, forced to sit motionless, and subjected to violence. There are reports of inadequate food, little to no medical care, and, in some cases, the denial of water. Fungal skin diseases and untreated infections are rampant. People who have heard about these absolute atrocities happening in America are warning us that this is fascism started in 1930’s with the extermination of the Jewish ghettoes and scooping people off the streets and deporting them with no due process has a terrible parallel. It also being said that this is what Nigel Farage and a Reform government would do if elected and if this sounds completely far-fetched then the American scenario sounds equally far fetched – except that we know that it is happening. There will be Congressional mid-term elections held in the USA in about November. but the amount of damage to be done to the American social structure is incalculable. And one has to ask the question whether the average American citizen shrugs their shoulders and thinks that we did vote as a society for illegal immigrants to be deported so now we have a government that is doing it. What is so terrifying about the process is that people who are scooped off the street and detained then have to prove that they are Americans and have the right to be in the USA and sometimes these papers are not as accessible to people as they ought to be (after a house fire or a forced eviction for example where even precious documents can get lost)

The breaking political news yesterday was the defection of Suella Braverman from the Tories to the Reform party. This has come as no real surprise to anybody because, whilst a standard bearer of the right, she did hold the office of Home Secretary. But she was sacked twice and failed in a leadership bid for the Tory party, after which she rather kept herself to herself. She has terrible reputation for the bullying of staff and, in particular, junior staff and her demeanour was such that she had to be sanctioned for this behaviour whilst a minister and it was claimed that she often shouted at and harangued civil servants if she did not get she wanted. My own take on this is that any minister who engages in this type of behaviour and who cannot argue their case probably should never have been promoted to a ministerial office in the first place. It is reported that Braverman feels like she has ‘come home’ and increases the number of ex-Tory MPs who have defected to Reform UK to eight. Braverman has poured vitriol on her former party and has made the following declaration after hr defection – ‘I am calling time. I am calling time on Tory betrayal. I am calling time on Tory lies. I am calling time on a party that keeps making promises with zero intention of keeping them. Britain is indeed broken. She is suffering. She is not well. Immigration is out of control. Our public services are on their knees. People do not feel safe.’ So the Braverman vitriol, previously reserved for her opponents, is now heaped upon her former colleagues.

The government has announced plans for far-reaching reforms of the police services in the UK. The principal reform is a dramatic reduction in the number of police forces from 43 to about 12 which may may be too dramatic a reform but only time will tell. In effect, we are seeing the end of county forces and the emergence of regional units which given the mobility of the modern criminal gangs is probably a worthwhile reform. At the same time, Facial recognition technology is to be rolled out across England and Wales to help all police forces, under sweeping reforms announced by the home secretary. The minister also announced in the Commons that all forces across England and Wales will be given artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help reduce the amount of time that officers must spend behind a desk, allowing them to be on the beat more instead. Finally, the shake-up will create a new National Police Service (NPS) to fight the most complex cross-border crime and there will be other far-reaching reforms as the Home secretary wants to create a licence to practice for police officers similar to the one for doctors, and to give herself the power to remove a chief constable for poor performance.

At last, we have seen that the outpourings of indignation over the Trump insult to the UK troops who came to the aid of the Americans in Afghanistan are having some effect. Trump has issued a post which praises the British soldiers for their valour, but this falls a long way short of an apology. It is said that Keir Starmer has been as angry about this as it is possible to be and we have come to the point at which the so-called ‘special relationship’ has turned toxic. Starmer, in common with other European leaders has probably come to the view that the time is over trying to cozy up to Trump and his bizarre and brutish behaviour has to be called out for what it is. One has to distinguish between the President himself (who, after all, was elected), those whom he has chosen so surround himself and the rest of the military and intelligence communities. Collaboration will still probably continue as normal between these intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic who I wonder if, privately, regard Trump as an aberration whose time will go eventually. We have an interesting political development happening on our own shores and it follows the resignation of an MP in the Greater Manchester area which opens the way for Andy Burnham, the pretty successful Labour mayor of Manchester to return to the House pf Commons should he be nominated for and win the by election. But there are stormy waters ahead for the Labour Party. Burnham is popular but not unusually popular and there are others, like Wes Streeting, who are also fancying their chances in a Labour leadership contest. Should Burnham return to the House of Commons (and this is by no means certain given the resurgence of Reform in the opinion polls), then there would have to be an election for another mayor of Manchester and, again, it could be that the Reform candidate when chosen be victorious here. I suspect that there may be a certain anti-Northern bias at play as well here so the Labour party is facing the multiple problems of an unpopular leader (but better the devil that you know), a party low in the opinion polls and sone divisive party politics ahead. Here at home, it looks as though we are going to have a rather dreary and wet week in prospect with temperatures in the 6°-8° range but at least this is better than ice snow and worse which sometimes afflicts is in late January. But I am still encouraged by the calendar which I consult every day which tells me that the days are lengthening by 1-2 minutes a day. What with one thing or another, I have got out of the habit of a daily walk down in to the town so I really must get back into training and do this daily walk. In the winter time, though, one is less likely to bump in to neighbours for a nice chat but there is always the possibility of chance meetings in Waitrose when I go down to collect my newspaper and avail myself of their ‘free’ coffee.

Just when you imagine that the news from America could not get any worse, then it just has.  A man who was an intensive care nurse has been shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis making the second in just over a week. The details of the killings are also disturbing – although the shot man was carrying a gun which is by no means unusual in that state and this citizen had a licence to carry it, it appears from video clips that he was forced to his knees, was disarmed and then a total of ten shots were fired into him, of which the first probably killed him. The White House immediately declared him to be a domestic terrorist ‘brandishing’ a weapon and prepared to shoot ICE personnel but there was no evidence of this in the video and why were ten shots fired in any case?. To neutral observers, these cases point to a paramilitary force, not properly trained and, to put it mildly, trigger happy in the extreme when citizens are confronted. There is also news this afternoon of an image released of a black female protestor and there is a very high probability that the image was AI doctored. So we now have a White House almost manufacturing the news (or altering the images that they publish) which means that of the old ethical rules about impartiality have been completely abandoned. Back home, we have news that the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party have refused Andy Burnham permission to put himself forward as a candidate for a forthcoming by-election in Manchester. In the short term, this may relieve Starmer of the presence of an MP challenging for his job but one feels that any such short term victory will be a Pyrrhic one. A Pyrrhic victory is a success achieved at such a devastating cost to the victor that it is equivalent to a defeat. Named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose costly 279 BC battle against the Romans led to the phrase, it describes a scenario where winning the immediate battle or argument results in long-term ruin. 

Yesterday was a quiet Sunday but I have helping my Droitwich friend  overcome her flu-like symptoms which often assail us at this time of year. We cooked a meal together and had a generally very quiet time but the opportunity was taken for a more general tidy-up of some of the clutter on my worktop which is fine so long a I remember which items have been put into which cupboards. Because I slept in a little late this morning, I missed some of the normal political programmes, but I may well be able to pick up on a repeat of the Trevor Phillips programmes later on in the evening. I always think that as a presenter and as an interviewer, he has the edge on Lorna Kuenssberg on BBC. There tend to be two other programmes well worth a watch later on in the day on a Sunday. One of these is the David Attenborough programme which this week had some fascinating film shot of snow leopards and arctic foxes in the high hills of the Himalayas just about at the snow line whilst another is the Simon Reeves series on ‘Pilgrimage’ which this week is focusing on Jerusalem.

The evening before yesterday, my efforts to replace my cooker hood bulb was eventually crowned with success and I am delighted to get this functional again. The screw holding the perspex cover in place is replaced with a ‘just about do’ from a collection of screws that I have in the garage. My domestic help’s grandfather, when he was alive, had a large metal tea caddy filled with every size and type of screw that you can imagine and my domestic help very kindly donated the tin to myself which evidently I scour from time to time when I need a screw of a particular size and type. I am helping my Droitwich friend to overcome one of those little fluey type episodes to which we are subject at this time of year so we cooked a very hot spicy soup together which was the only sustenance we needed. Yesterday  was one of those ‘crashing out’ days when there was nothing in particular that desperately needed to be done so it is a question of taking it easy on oneself for most of the day. The weather than other people experience is often only of passing interest to me because here in the British Isles we can expect fairly regular succession of storms sweeping in from the Atlantic which means that our weather systems are not usually of a very  severe nature. But in North America, the authorities are getting prepared for a huge and prolonged ‘ice storm’. The National Weather Service has warned communities the significant, long-duration winter storm will bring widespread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain from the Southern Rockies to New England – lasting from Friday until Monday, and to prepare for bitterly cold temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills. The storm is expected to bring a crippling ice storm from Texas through parts of the South, potentially around 30cm (12ins) of snow from Oklahoma through Washington DC, New York and Boston. Then a final punch of bitterly cold air could plunge wind chill temperatures to -46C (-50F) in parts of Minnesota and North Dakota. What  is happening is that mixture filled air from the Caribbean is meeting with a huge blast of very cold Arctic air progressing south from Canada and the result is the extremely cold temperatures reaching as low as -46° degrees. What I think is worrying the authorities is that whilst some communities in the US experience,  and can prepare for, the extent of the ice storm is such that some communities will never have experienced anything approaching this in their life time and therefore several deaths are only to be anticipated. Meanwhile, in the political sphere, the backlash against Donald Trump’s slur upon NATO allies continues. Trump claimed that the Allies had never come to support of America which is completely untrue because after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent conflict in Afghanistan, America’s allies in NATO certainly lent unstinting support. The US Department of Defense says the US lost some 2,460 troops in Afghanistan. In addition, 457 British troops, over 150 Canadian troops, 90 French service personnel, 62 German soldiers and 44 Danish troops were also killed. As the population of the USA is some 55 times of Denmark, then roughly the same ‘per capita’ proportion of Danish troops lost their lives in a war instigated by the USA. Now the interesting question is whether anyone will inform Trump that he was utterly mistaken in his assertions about the Allies not pulling their weight or whether his inner circle either do not wish to know the facts (as it conflicts with their mindset) or that they are so scared of Trump that nobody tells him the truth.  After the initial Trump mis-statement there have been plenty of loud voices informing Trump of the true facts but will Trump either listen or even believe them? Anything Trump does not like  is compartmentalised and labelled as ‘fake news’ which  is a convenient psychological mechanisms for avoiding the truth that one does not wish to hear. Even some of the Catholic cardinals in the USA – a usually very conservative body of clerics – have recently been led to condemn the foreign policy of the current Trump regime as well the shooting(s) in Minneapolis. The story here is even worse to recount than a woman shot dead in her car a week ago whilst trying to make her escape. A video that appears to show the shooting has been posted on X.  In the footage, a number of masked federal agents can be seen surrounding a man, who is forced to the floor in a struggle. Several gunshots can be heard before the agents, some of whom can be seen holding pistols, move away from the man, who can be seen lying on his back on the street.  Sky News has not independently verified the footage, which appears to have been filmed from behind a window. So in this particular case, the man was overpowered and held on the ground by several ICE agents before  being shot. The anger that these incidents are inducing in becoming very palpable and the increasing tensions may yet lead to large scale demonstrations u[pon which  the ICE agents will have no hesitation in deploying tear gas.

At about this time of year, one TV spectacle to which I look forward with increasing pleasure is the annual ‘Six Nations’ international Rugby competition. I have no real idea of the relative strengths of the various teams. France and England are predicted to be the two top teams with France being the slight favourite and the Irish coming in as a good third. Scotland, Wales and Italy will probably occupy the bottom half pf the league table but then unexpected results can occur and, unlike football, the final outcome of a game can be decided in the last few minutes of a game (or even seconds in a game if the ultimate victory depends upon a successful conversion kick following a late try)  This year’s competition  starts on Thursday, February 5th which is in about twelve days time so this competition livens up the dreary weekends of winter. When Meg and I used to have a winter break with Saga holidays in Salobreña in southern Spain, the local Spanish watched in amazement as the Brits gathered around the communal TV to watch the rugby matches and the Welsh would sing their national anthem at the tops of their voices (in Welsh, naturally).

My son had alerted me in a video-call to a series on TV on ‘interesting railway stations’ and it was no surprise that they started off with York railway station which covers a whole arc pretty near to the centre of the city. This focused upon coastal railway stations, including Barry Island in South Wales. Barry was to achieve a particular kind of fame, though, as Woodham Brothers scrapyard in Barry, South Wales, was a legendary site where 297 withdrawn British Railways steam locomotives were sent for scrapping between 1959 and 1980. Known as the ‘locomotive graveyard,’ it became the largest source of steam locomotives for the heritage railway preservation movement in Britain. The railway wagons were easier to dismantle and to process and were the first of the stock leaving the remainder of the defunct steam locos to be snapped up by various Heritage Steam groups that sprung up around the country. Yesterday morning did not start particularly well as my Droitwich friend texted me still feeling as though she was going down with flu or something similar whilst I had a sleepless period in the middle pf the night, alleviated by a slice of toast and a cup of ‘Sleep’ inducing tea. I turned my attention to replacing the cooker hood light bulb which in theory was a very simple job. Although somewhat fiddly, the replacement process should have been easy but for some reason the replacement bulb would not engage. To make matters worse, in my many attempts to screw it in, I dropped it on the metal surface of the cooker and it smashed. But I have another arriving today so will try it again later.

There is a particular source of irritation, not to say anger, directed against some of Donald Trump’s latest remarks where he has accused NATO of not coming to the aid of America when it was needed. This is absolutely untrue as NATO collectively came to the aid of the USA after the 9/11 attacks. Although Trump claims the UK evaded the front line in Afghanistan, actually 457 soldiers were lost in the conflict not to mention Iraq and other theatres of war in the Middle East. Much derided Denmark actually lost more solders per capita in the war in Afghanistan than any other nation. Meanwhile Trump himself is reported to have successfully evaded the draft for the Vietnam war some five times – at that time, the American elite paid private doctors to certify their sons as being unfit for military service and, in Trump’s case, it was ‘bad feet’ So the families of British veterans and those who had lost sons in the conflict must feel particularly affronted by Trump’s ill-informed remarks. The trouble is that the claim is made loudly but the rebuttal is generally said a lot more quietly thus giving undue prominence to Trump’s false claims. Last night, I watched the BBC’s ‘Any Questions’ and an audience member, firmly but assuredly, reminded the audience that he had been one of the first to see fighting in Iraq. The Americans, though, have always been averse to ‘boots on the ground’ (ever since a procession of killed soldiers returning in body bags helped to sway opinion against the war in Vietnam) Not surprisingly, the Americans have preferred to bomb and deploy missile attacks thus keeping their own troops relatively immune from direct contact with their enemies.

After exercising, showering and breakfasting, I made my way into town by car and, by an off chance, popped  into Wetherspoons where I found two of my erstwhile park friends who I suspected might be in the downstairs bar. I stayed and chatted with them for a few minutes but could not stay for a great length of time because I had only paid for an hour’s parking in the Waitrose carpark and I not want to run over my allotted time. So I reclaimed the car and re-parked it, popping into the store to get my newspaper and purchasing one of their better home made soups. I then made my way to the ‘Gifts of Love’ charity shop but it was deserted and the assistant seemed pleased to see me as I had not been in the shop since before Christmas. I had a coffee and some coffee cake and then my eye fell on a large block of Rose Quartz crystal which I admired whilst the shop assistant extolled the virtues of having some rose crystal in the bedroom. According to devotees of the subject, possession this crystal known as the ‘love stone,’ is primarily associated with opening the heart chakra for unconditional love, self-love, compassion, and emotional healing, bringing peace and calm by cleansing negativity and stress. Its powers extend to attracting love, fostering deeper relationships, encouraging forgiveness, and providing comfort, often used in meditation, jewelry, or kept in the home to promote loving, harmonious energy and gentle emotional balance. Of course all of the above is very much associated with ‘New Age’ styles of thought  and practice and I would be amazed if there was the slightest scientific evidence for any of the properties that the crystal is said to possess. Bu the thought  does occur to me that if people ‘believe’ in the power of crystals, then  you may have a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ effect whereby the mere belief in the efficacy of crystals generates the positive  qualities they are said to possess.

A rather disturbing tendency was noted in the American delegation that accompanied Trump to Davos. He brought a huge entourage into the Swiss ski resort who swept in and then swept out again. But if the immediate threat of tariffs passed, the challenge of US disruption did not. Even before Greenland, the American delegation here was spoiling for a fight. Commerce secretary Howard Lutkin was belligerent at every opportunity. ‘We have come with a clear message,’ he said on a panel, sat next to Chancellor Rachel Reeves: ‘Globalism is dead.’ So the world is left with a prospect that even a world after Trump will be populated by an American presence which is insular, belligerent and is  determined to act as the new imperialist power. These mindsets may have set in for a generation and perhaps the rules-based economic order carefully constructed after the second World  War has now gone for ever and the world, as a whole, is going to have to develop new systems of relationships between trading blocks and the big powers.

The evening before yesterday I made a point of watching one of the series of ‘Wainwright Walks’ the subject of which was the little jewel of a mountain called Cat Bells which overlooks Derwentwater, one of the lakes nearest to Keswick. This little mountain is highly visible from much of Derwentwater and has attracted thousands of family visitors who have been attracted to it because it is quite accessible, not very high at 1500′ and, in theory, quite walkable by all members of a family. I have a photo somehow in my collection of having got my mother at an advanced age half-way up Cat Bells but there are some quite steep little scrambles on it, not least near to the summit itself. Once the programme had concluded I carried on watching a fascinating documentary on the Bermuda Triangle, an area of sea bounded by Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. Some fifty ships and twenty aircraft have inexplicably disappeared without trace in the Bermuda Triangle and this has given rise to several lurid stories. But gradually it seems that the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle are being scientifically investigated and one of the latest theories is that a combination of strong currents coupled with strong winds can create monster waves that overpower aircraft. The initial loss of five aircraft without trace has now been analysed as pilots becoming spatially disoriented and seeing a landmass in a different direction to that anticipated assumed that their instrumentation was malfunctioning whereas it was, in fact accurate. 

We have witnessed a massive climbdown by Donald Trump meeting with the worlds economic leaders in Davos, Switzerland. Trump has dropped tariff threats after NATO talks about Greenland and says he will not be imposing tariffs regarding Greenland after a very productive meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte. In his post on his ‘Truth Social’ platform, Trump declared that he had formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region. The US president added  that the solution will be great for the US and all NATO countries and based upon this understanding, tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st would not be imposed. The exact nature of the climbdown is somewhat difficult  to discern at the moment. It looks as though the Americans may have promised access to whatever military bases they desire on Greenland in perpetuity but whether this amounts to a limited transfer of sovereignty may be revealed  in time. Trump for his part is heralding the latest developments in his ‘Board of Peace’ to oversee Gaza but this seems just like a tactic to divert attention away from Greenland. What is now clear is that Trump uses brutish behaviour and warlike threats as a constant element in his approach to world affairs and now he is anything but an ally who can be trusted to keep his word. During the day, I had seen a programme by a forensic psychiatrist who had diagnosed what he terms ‘malignant narcissism’ in Trump’s personality. Psychiatrists are not supposed to offer diagnoses at a distance but occasionally they do look at evidence of what people have written about themselves to make a diagnosis. In Trump’s case, the letter sent to the Norwegian government complaining that they’ (i.e. not the Nobel committee) had robbed him of the Peace Prize which he thought was rightfully his after ending eight wars (supposedly) displayed all of the classic signs of malignant narcissism and this analysis seemed very sound. Other things that are quite momentous get revealed by the American liberal media who are following appearance of key officials before various Senate committees assiduously. There was one clip of film which I found to be literally jaw dropping. An American senator presented evidence to a committee in which Kash Patel was supposedly confronted by evidence that he had singlehandedly deleted 2.4 terabytes of FBI data covering issues such as Russian interference in US elections and the Maxwell and Epstein cases. But despite a YouTube clip which I have seen, it is also being claimed that this story is entirely fictitious and has been constructed i.e. made up for purely entertainment purposes. The Main Street Media such as the New York Times and the BBC seem to have fact-checked this story and have chosen not to believe it so perhaps it is true that some counter-propaganda is at work in the American liberal media and ‘truth’ is fast disappearing.

Our domestic help called around this morning and after a brief chat with her, I went quickly to participate in my Tai Chi session (which I actually missed a week ago) This was held by our normal instructor’s daughter and I appreciated her approach very much. Afterwards, I had a coffee with a bank manager friend of mine and we commiserated about such things as how difficult  it was to park in the Worcester Royal hospital car park. This is fast approaching that of a national scandal. Parking at Worcestershire Royal Hospital is widely described as a ‘nightmare’ due to severe congestion, with visitors reporting 60–90 minute waits just to exit the site, particularly during peak times. The layout causes long tailbacks on Charles Hastings Way, with limited spaces and high demand leading to stressful, long-term issues.  Things were just as bad when I had a stay in the hospital nearly eight years ago now and nothing has improved in the meantime. After our coffee which was very welcome as we had not bumped into each other since before Christmas, I returned home where our domestic help was hard at work. I mentioned to her how we are having great difficulty removing the shielding perspex cover to the hood light over the cooker because a retaining screw had become ‘stripped’ i.e. a screwdriver would only rotate and not grip it any more. Now my domestic help had solved this problem before and we managed to get the screw loosened a little using an elastic band and one of those micro-screwdrivers that are often sold in a pack of six. We could then unscrew cover, access the bulb and order a new one which we did via Amazon with a pack of two arriving the next day. So this will shortly solve quite a great problem as cooking without an overhead light is not to be recommended. Our domestic help also located a cup that had been missing for days and she has great ‘form’ in managing to find items such a these which might be anywhere in the house.

The evening before yesterday, I settled down to watch a couple of re-broadcasts of ‘Yes,Prime Minister’ all of which I have seen before, but which still retain their appeal after all of these years – it was said to be Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV programme. As it happened, I watched the first of these but fell asleep before the second was shown only to wake up to a programme which had just started on the life and work of John Logie Baird, the inventor of television. What was so amazing was that Baird invented the essentials of TV single handed and practically with all of his own self-funded equipment. The BBC were actually very ‘sniffy’ about the Baird system  and the first TV commissioned by the BBC was that of a rival system ‘Marconi-EMI’. The Germans, Americans and probably the Russians were all thinking about and learning from each other about the rudiments of TV and one of the things that I learnt from my study of the Sociology of Science for my MSc programme at Salford University was that many discoveries in science are actually ‘multiples’ i.e. with the same technology and knowledge-base many investigators in different countries might be striving for the same goal but in the end  only one person is credited with the discovery. In fact the Americans were developing systems which paralleled those of Baird but they had thrown huge amounts of money into their efforts whereas Baird worked single handed. Another thing that I learnt was that Baird himself cracked the problem of transmission in colour by using revolving disks that shot in the primary colours of red, green and blue and then combined these into a colour image. So the programme was a fascinating one and Baird probably has not received the credit due to him which the TV programme was trying to restore.  Baird’s original equipment was either destroyed in a fire or has mysteriously disappeared. So having watched the programme, I had a quick look at my emails before retiring and was delighted to received one from an old friend who has been very ill but who now seems to be on the road to recovery. There is some way to go yet and further bouts of treatment have to be undertaken in February but she and I are both hopeful that a good end is in sight and then we might soon meet to exchange all of our bits of news. This week the ‘hobbit hole’ clearance programme is in abeyance whilst my son and daughter-in-law are paying a family visit but it is satisfying that the two biggest have been cleared and all of the contents successfully thrown away, found a good home or recycled. We are now due for a period of wet, cold and windy weather which does not make for pleasant walks into town  but I have generally been going down into town  by car anyway as I had things to carry. According to the readings on my calendar, the days are getting longer by about a minute and a half each day but we have such a thick layer of cloud recently then this is hardly noticed. The world leaders who have assembled in Davos, Switzerland, last night have all been speaking in their own ways about what they consider to be a ‘rupture’ of the system of rules-based international trade and the necessity to construct a new world economic order. Mark Carney, ex-governor of the Bank of England and now the premier of Canada, gave a very intelligent and thoughtful speech in which he tried to map out what a new economic order might look like. In the meanwhile, Trump is due to arrive with a huge American contingent and he is breathing all fire and brimstone and continuing to issue blood-curdling threats about what he intends to do about Greenland. But there is now an understanding that the days of trying to humour Trump are over and he must be confronted, which he will be. But in the strange, Trumpian view of the universe, the more other world leaders tell him he is mistaken, the more convinced he is that America does not need the rest of the world and that he needs to make America ‘great again’, I think there is a realisation, though, that even when Trump has gone (and that might be sooner rather than later given the state of his health) the world is now a very changed place and the rules-based order of international trade has to be replaced by probably a whole series of bilateral agreements between large trading blocks.

As I sometimes do midweek, I decided to go and frequent the Methodist Centre to have a mid-morning coffee. I got chatting to a lady on the ‘Chatty Table’ which was interesting as she was originally from Halifax in Yorkshire. We remarked to each other that it always a bit strange when you see, for example, route direction signs to a town in which you used to live but no longer visit because all of your connections to it have been cut (largely as family members die) She and I had experienced similar events in our lives where the friends and relatives that you knew in your you have not moved away and keep within the environs of the town in which they were brought up. But our conversation was cut short as her balance and exercise class was due to start shortly  so I left as well to collect a copy of my daily newspaper and to get some cash out of a nearby ATM. Then I returned home and made myself with rice meal enhanced by bits of ham and petit pois which was sufficient for me today. I then decided to go shopping  and my local Aldi was very quiet at this time of the day/week. I did succumb to the temptation, though, to buy some fur-lined cloggies which were being sold off for £7 but the original articles upon which they are modelled sell for about seven times this price.  Then I needed to unpack the shopping  and get the bins out ready for collection and that is most of the day gone. There is a treat in store for me though as there is going to be a Wainwright programme describing the ascent of Catbells which is a beautiful little mountain outside Keswick which overlooks Derwentwater – in fact, I have an oil colour of this in my main lounge. I sent an email to a fell-walking friend of mine who  I am pretty sure will have climbed this mountain in her youth. It is only 1500′ rather than the more typical 2500′-3000′ feet but has quite a demanding final section in the approach to the summit.

Yesterday morning, I had set my alarm to get me up at 6.00am rather than 7.00am and my Droitwich friend and I exchanged some motivational texts to get ourselves up and running as we both feel a little like death at this hour in the morning but we both have commitments that mean we cannot really afford to luxuriate in our respective bed, much as we would like to. There are a few glimmers of hope as a way of resolving the Greenland scenario although this might be in the manner of a drowning man clutching at straws.  Firstly there is the prospect that Trump’s advisers might persuade him that the European troop enhancements in Greenland on recent days was a way of deterring the Russians, not aiming to attack Americans. Secondly, there is to be a meeting of world international leaders in Davos, Switzerland (an annual event) where other world leaders may be ably to influence Trump. Thirdly, there is recently breaking news that tariffs are having a devastating effect on America’s agricultural economy. Fourthly various Republican members of the US Senate are now getting seriously alarmed and are speaking out against Trump so we may see some of the tectonic plates shifting. Domestically, the Labour government is becoming notorious for its ‘U’ turns in policy. Two are happening before our very eyes. In the first, it looks as though the so-called Hillsborough law which enforces a degree of candour on all public officials following a disaster my be pulled so as to protect our own security services – for whom candour is the worst possible policy, preferring their own clandestine methods of working. But a more significant ‘U’ turn may be a consideration whether or not to follow the Australians and ban all mobile phone use for under 16’s. Even if the UK does not follow Australia, there are various bits of tightening that can be dome immediately such as a legal ban on phones in all type of educational establishments. Some schools are already making pupils deposit their phones in a specially built cage and these are only released when the children are ready to leave school and to go home and this may be an interesting compromise as many parents will use phones to make a rendezvous with their children when children are leaving school. The trouble with the Australian scheme is that enterprising children are already finding their way around restrictions and are sharing this knowledge with fellow pupils but personally I am of the view that there needs to be a massive campaign, along the lines of a health  education campaign, instructing school children about the ways in which the internet and social media can be force for bad just as much for good. But as I know from my own day-to-day interactions with the internet, it is easier to get an answer to an intellectual query than it is to look up the same in a reference book. I am afraid that there are no easy answers in this sphere and I do not think that I would like the challenges to be faced on a hourly basis if I were still involved in an education profession. Already in any kind of interaction with a government bureaucracy, a phone call will direct attention to an internet resource which is written at such a level of generality that it never answers the question about which one is phoning in the first place. Even speaking to a ‘human’ can take anything up to half an hour and many of these transactions tend to end in failure as well.

At about breakfast time, my Droitwich friend popped in having dropped her boys off at the school just down the road. She looked at the pile of items that I was due to take down to the charity shop and relieved me of the cagoules and waterproof leggings that we used to use on really wet days in the Lake District but I have doubt we have worn for abut 25 years. But they were still in good condition and my friend thought they could be put to an incredibly good use when her boys are doing the trekking and orienteering section of the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme. I was delighted to see these go to a good home as it were and that just left two bundles of single bed bedding and coverlets and a bag of bathroom associated goods such as some spare wall grab handles (which I no longer need as  got a permanent one fitted whilst Meg was alive) These three bundles of things I trundled along to the Salvation Army shop where they were placed on the pile of other unwanted goods. Once sorted through, some of the bedding materials they might display in the shop to be sold for cash but I imagine that the Salvation Army would never turn away good quality bedding which it could use in its own hostels or even given directly to some of the poor souls sleeping rough on the streets. Then  spent a fair bit of the morning going through some past issues of ‘The Times‘ to retain anything of interest before I set out for my scheduled appointment at the dentists in the middle of the day. I have been given two more appointments, one to fix and replace some of my fillings and the other a date with the dental hygienist some time next month. When I got home, although it was late, I cooked myself a ‘meat and two veg’ meal with the ham I had cooked over the weekend.

If Donald Trump does go ahead with his stated aim of acquiring Greenland and adding it to the United States, then of course this is an invasion of a European country by the US as well as an attack on one of the allies in the NATO alliance.In theory, Trump argues that this is to prevent the Russians from taking over the island and one would have thought that the Russians would have been highly offended.But actually the Russians are delighted with the Trump moves and are almost encouraging him on. This is because from the Russian point of view, NATO is being fatally weakened and perhaps even destroyed from within. At the same time, a Trump ‘capture’ of Greenland could be seen as a parallel of the take over of adjacent territory  which is what Russia is attempting to do with the Ukraine. Incredible though it may seem, Putin has been invited to be a member of the ‘Peace Board’ to administer the territory of Gaza in the future. Other countries may join the Peace Board if they pay Donald Trump (NOT the US Treasury) 1 $billion from whence the money, or may not, be used in the reconstruction of Gaza.

The evening before yesterday, a programme was broadcast which may have been a repeat but was well worth a watch. The programme was about the life and career of Albert Wainwright who wrote a series of seven books detailing all of the walks and routes to the Lakeland mountains and fells. The books were incredibly distinctive because each page was beautifully handwritten with excellent illustrations of the routes and topography of the mountains themselves. The books were incredibly well research because  Wainwright himself used to go off very early each weekend and for a particular mountain or fell took copious notes and then returning home would condense these down to one or two pages per mountain in his guide These guides were self-published by Wainwright and probably took the best part of a decade and.a half to write and research. It is unlikely that they will ever be paralleled because it is very unlikely that we shall ever see again a person with the dedication, illustrative skills and comprehensive attention to detail which are exemplified in the books. All dedicated walkers in the English Lakes will know about and treasure their copies of ‘Wainwrights’ for the tops of the mountains do not change very much over time apart from the occasional rock fall. In fact, it was not unknown for walkers (such as my wife and I) to have two copies of the same Guide, one of which was to be kept in a pristine condition at home and to be studied in detail the night before a walk whilst the other copy as to be taken on the walk itself and despite being protected was likely to get a little sodden with rain drops whilst it was being consulted. It has been said that the Wainwrights were the first handwritten books since the Middle Ages but I do remember that I learnt using the computer language BASIC by using a book hand drawn in the style of Wainwright. Of course, nowadays one can use a computer font such as the much derided Comic Sans MS to simulate a handwritten book but Wainwright started writing his books in the early 1950’s so computer font technology was in its infancy.

The new week started in a busy way with long messages and texts from a couple of close friends which are always nice to receive but take some time to compose a commensurate reply. At the same time there are a series of domestic activities that need to be attended to this week of which one is getting some of the excess clutter removed from our hobbit holes into the hands of the charity shops. As Bromsgrove High Street is pedestrianised, getting a big volume of material into the hands of the charity shops calls for some logistical thinking but perhaps it has to be done a few items at a time. I imagine, though, that the charity shops are overflowing with goods of all kinds as people will have taken the Christmas break allied to New Year resolutions to declutter their houses. Having said that, I still have a temptation to explore charity shops and am always on the lookout for those kinds of kitchenware goods that were manufactured decades ago I which the quality seems so much higher. One of my friends, for example will never heat up anything using a plastic container in the microwave but will always empty it into an glazed earthenware container first and there may be a point to all of these, Scientists have recently discovered that microplasticised particles can travel to all parts of the human body. Recent research confirms that microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) can migrate to the human brain, entering via the bloodstream or directly through the nasal passages, potentially bypassing the blood-brain barrier, leading to neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and neuronal damage, with studies showing increasing concentrations and concerning links to neurodegenerative processes, although the full health impacts are still being investigated. 

This morning I had a wonderful surprise as I was drinking coffee (alone) in Waitrose where I go to collect my copy of the newspaper. I bumped into an old Pilates friend who was just recovering from a hip operation which explains why our paths had not crossed recently – we have both lost our respective spouses in the past year or so sand so we both understood where we were both coming from. She used to teach Maths, Physics and Chemistry on an individual tutorial basis and I taught some Statistics and Research Methods so we sort of understood each other’s professional worlds. She used to lay on the mat next to me. as it happens and we were always joking with other about one thing or another during the class. These unexpected meetings are always such a pleasure as well – I informed my friend that one of our classmates that we had known for about 10 years was leaving the area to live nearer to her daughter in the South of England. Meanwhile, some of our attention has been distracted by the horrendous rain crash in Southern Spain. Two trains were involved, one train carrying around 300 people and had just left the historic city of Cordoba. Its speed at the moment of the accident was 110 kph, well below the maximum limit of 250 kph on that stretch whereas the oncoming train, carrying 187 people, was travelling at a speed of 205 kph, Renfe said. It now looks as though a broken fishplate or rail joint may have been the cause of the derailment which flipped some coaches onto the opposite set of tracks and into the path of the train travelling in the opposite direction. It seems a most terrible coincidence that the derailment of the first rain should have occurred so class to the imminent arrival of the second and had the second train managed to brake in time then practically all of the casualties might have been avoided.  As it was, the trains were only 20 seconds apart from each other and hence the second train could not stop in time. Casualties are already at 39 but expected to rise once heavy lifting gear can be put into place along the embankment down which some of the carriages rolled. The drivers have been complaining, though, for a long time that there were problems with the track and the overhead power supply on this section  of track.

Now that all of the celebrations and festivities are well and truly over, it is time to return to ‘normal’ living as it were. My son and daughter-in-law are due to call around later on in the morning and I am cooking them a very conventional meat-and-two veg meal of ham with baked potatoes and some Cavolo Nero kale. I must remind myself to call on my next-door neighbour who I have not seen for days as the wife is still recovering from a hip replacement operation, but I think she is still at the shuffling around the house stage. The only really exciting thing in prospect this week is a visit to the dentists to replace a temporary filling with a permanent one. These dental appointments are now like gold dust and I think the planning cycle for these appointments is about three months ahead and perhaps even longer. 

EU leaders are now gathering for a ‘make or break’ summit over the future of Greenland. Although this phrase is often over-used, on this occasion it might be completely accurate as Trump seems determined to acquire Greenland in his own words ‘by one means or another’ The ironic feature to this whole episode is that under an agreement dating from the early 1950’s the Americans have the right to build whatever military bases they want anywhere in the island (although this is theoretical rather than real as much of Greenland is ice-covered rock) But for the Europeans, we are talking about the survival of NATO as a real and practical military alliance and the invasion of Greenland would be seen as unacceptable. But it does appear that Europeans are inclined to resist Trump by force and a certain amount of ‘playing for time’ might be the order of the day. Opposition to the Greenland plan is growing in the US Congress with calls for Trump’s impeachment and moderate Republicans are wondering where the Greenland fiasco is likely  to lead them. Those of a somewhat more internationalist outlook (and there are not many Republicans of that persuasion) are disturbed about the wider geo-political implications of the Trump doctrine which seems to give the green light to big and powerful countries to invade and then annex their neighbours and all of this we thought had been ended by the second World War. In domestic politics we also to be at a turning point as well. Some are predicting that the Reform party will be emboldened and strengthened by defections from the Tory party and Reform could well replace the Labour party at any general election. But another view is that Reform will be actually weakened by being seen as the home to Tories who made a hash of things whilst last in government and many of whom lost their seats anyway. So this fracturing of the right might be a mirror image of what happened in the 1970’s when Thatcher was successful primarily because the opposition to her was divided between the Labour party and the breakaway SDP. In round terms, Thatcher only won just over 40% of the popular vote and if you take into account  the 70% voting rate in general elections, then only about 3 in every 10 people actually voted for her. It is quite possible to see a similar result being played out in future years when the Labour Party (just about) secures a little over one third of the popular vote whilst the Liberals, Tories and Reform fight over the remainder. I think it seems probably that we have seen the end of one-party governments and need to et used to the idea of coalitions which has been the norm in continental Europe, particularly Germany, for decades now.

In the late morning, my son and daughter-in-law called around and evidently it was good to see them. It was my turn to cook them a Sunday lunch so what I prepared was very simple being an unsmoked ham joint cooked in the slow cooker and then we did some potatoes par-boiled and then tossed in oil) and Cavolo Nero kale to complete the dinner. My family had brought around some little pots of mousse for our sweets and then we started to relax for the afternoon. Somehow we got onto the issue of quality measurement in education and this encouraged me to go and resurrect from the filing cabinet the classic photo I had taken of some 127 boxes of evidence that we had populated during our preparations for the last Quality Assurance visit in which I was engaged more than 20 years ago. I also resurrected the report from the assessors which I have not read for twenty years but was of particular interest to my daughter-in-law as just before her retirement she achieved an ‘Excellent’ in every category in an Ofsted report on the school of which she was a headmistress and was therefore intrigued to see what had been written about our department two decades previously. At the time, we scored a 22 out of a possible 24 points which enabled us to pass over the threshold of a ‘Qaulity’ institution on the strength of which we were invited into a multi-university consortium to investigate Quality in Business Studies education. So some of this invoked trips down memory lane but my daughter-in-law was informing me about the changes in the way in which modern universities, post-Covid, had changed recently particularly as the teaching world is now dominated by the mobile phone, the internet and the prevalence of Artificial  Intelligence which is transforming the ways  which subject is delivered, assessed and the subsequent quality monitored. My daughter-in-law and I are both of the view that education is a world which we are both glad and relieved to have left behind us and, even if successful in today’s degree programmes, there are enormous challenges to be faced in getting one’s first professional job, acquiring a foot on the housing ladder and thus acquiring a degree of economic independence. In retrospect only, it is probably the case that the generation in which my wife (when alive) were brought up must seem like some kind of golden age because the jobs market was expanding and one’s first house could be acquired for about two times the average salary instead of about ten times, often involving a deposit of some £60k which takes a lot of acquiring. There may well be some inter-generational transfer of wealth from grandparents whose major economic commitments such as mortgagee and the costs of having their own children may have diminished.  The modern ‘apprenticeship’ may be the way forward for many young people but evidence suggests that competition for certain high-quality apprenticeships, particularly degree-level roles, has become as fierce as, or even more intense than, that for top university places. While university applications are generally high, the limited supply of apprenticeship opportunities compared to high demand has created an intensely competitive market.