Today being the end of the week, Meg and I had nothing really in prospect so it was a toss-up whether we went to the park or visited Waitrose in the off-chance that we might bump into any of our pre-pandemic friends. Eventually, we decided on the off-chance to visit Waitrose and we were really glad that we did because sitting there waiting for us was our University of Birmingham friend. We were both pleased to see each other and we had one of those chats where one thing leads to another. One amusing topic of conversation was the disjunction that is apparent between the normal speaking voice with which we are familiar and the sound of your voice as captured on a tape recorder, for example. As we hear the sound of our voice mediated somewhat by the bones of our skull, then what we imagine to be our normal speaking voice is not what what others hear. This then led onto one of the insights of social psychology which I have always found fascinating. This is the self concept that individuals have of themselves and an early social psychologist at the turn of the century dubbed this ‘the looking glass self’ The essential idea behind this psychological contruct is that we form the perceptions that we have of ourselves from the way in others perceive us – on other words, other people in their interactions with us constitute a type of mirror or ‘looking glass’. There is subtlety attached to all of this because it is actually our perceptions of other people’s perceptions of us that get built into our own self-identity. I remember that as boys playing football in the school yard during playtime, as a rather cruel joke we use to take the kid that happened to be the least skilful at football and then all pretend to him that he was absolutly brilliant, even allowing him to score occasionally to add to his self belief. The young ‘victim’ (as they were in reality) then started to think of themselves as really talented which I suppose is rather a cruel joke but that is what children sometimes do to each other in the playground. Allied to this story is the other one I blogged about the other day when the world famous footballer Pele had just died. The story is told of an amateur footballer who had been knocked unconscious and was being treated by the trainer at the edge of the pitch. But the manager was desperate to get him playing again in a very tight Cup match and when the trainer explained that, after the concussion, the footballer was confused and could not remember who he was, the manager retorted ‘Tell him he is Pele and get him back on the pitch!’ The conversation with our University of Birmingham friend then flowed on to the topic of the level of musical education we had both received and how we all have to find our natural level of ability before we realise that we were never going to become concert pianists or performers.

This lunchtime we raided the freeer and found one piece of frozen white fish that was going to constitute our lunch. The frozen fish is nutritious enough but not particularly flavoursome, so it needed a bit of ‘tarting up’ for our meal. I discovered that I had a half packet of Hollandaise sauce powder left which I then enhanced with some ‘mixed Italian herbs’ I discovered in our spice rack and all of this had the desired effect as our lunch turned out to be quite tasty and was complemented with a baked potato and some green beans. After lunch, we enjoyed a little concert of some Mozart piano sonatas and then tuned in to an old version of ‘Morse’ being shown on ITV3. The theme of this proved a little ‘dark’ for Meg (teenagers dying after taking ‘E’ and similar laboratory manufactured drugs) so we abandoned this and tuned into an animal type program that was more of Meg’s cup of tea. I read the newspaper from cover-to-cover and successfully completed a ‘difficult’ Soduka which I rarely do these days. Meg and I are looking forward to this weekend because it is the start of the 6 Nations rugby competition – some of it collides with our visit to church on late Saturday afternoon so we shall have to make a judicious use of our Personal Video Recorder to record the matches (or even the whole series) for later viewing.

The first hint of a breakthrouh in some of the public sector strikes was seen this afternoon. Nurses in Wales with the Royal College of Nursing have called off planned strike action next week after a pay offer this afternoon. Pat Cullen, the union’s general secretary, observed that if the other governments can negotiate and find more money for this year, the prime minister can do the same. This puts the presssure upon health ministers who refuse to negotiate on the nursing dispute in England to come up with a similar offer but somehow, I think that they will still hold fast and not accept the precedent of the nurses in Wales.

Today has been an interesting day. As I normally do, I got up early and got myself to my local supermrket one minute before it opened which is my ideal. I decided to make this week a ‘light’ week so whereas I might be tempted to buy the occasional thing that was not on my mental list, I tried to restrict myself today to only those items that were strictly necessary. As a consequence, I finished my shopping ten minutes early, saved the best part of £10.00 and then, having collected our daily newspaper arrived home before normal and got the packing unshopped in almost record time. As I was on the road, there was a not particularly pleasant sort of stinging rain hanging in the air. Consequently, it was quite easy for Meg and I to decide on an activity rather than walking in our local park. As we did a couple of weeks ago, we set off for nearby Droitwich and immediately to the coffee house which is our usual haunt. By the time we got there, the place was absolutely heaving but we were fortunate in finding a little table to ourselves near the back of the shop. On a neighbouring table, there was a threesome with a couple of Jack Russell dogs and we had an entertaining conversation with them about ‘doggy ‘ matters, even though we are not dog owners ourselves. After coffee, we piled into the Cancer Research charity shop next door pursuing the shop for kitchen odds and ends without finding nothing that we wanted or needed. However, in contrast to a couple of weeks ago on our last visit, they had a good supply of shirts in the 15½” range and I quickly selected a couple to replace some of the shirts I have in our wardrobe that are by now getting a bit threadbare. Finally, we popped into our latest hardware store – Wilko– in search of a simple kitchen tray which I have in mind for a particular purpose and it took a lot of finding. Even the store staff did not know where in the store they might be found one or whether they had any in stock. Eventually, I found a supply of what I wanted and the dimensions were absolutely perfect. In the past, I had bought a lot of plastic/melamine type trays that this store used to stock but that was years ago and times have moved on. However, I found a wooden tray (actually, in bamboo, it was said) and was pleased to have located what I wanted. As I was taking it out of the car when we got home, though, I was delighted to discover that that what looked like a tray actually had folding legs on the back to convert it into a low table if you want. This fits my purposes even better so after I got it home, it had a quick treatment of some furniture polish to keep it looking in good condition and then I will store it until I bring it into use.

When we got home, it was fairly late by this stage but I threw together a meal (onions, tomatoes, peppers, some peas) which I served on a bed of pasta (for Meg) but cream crackers for myself. For protein we resorted to a standby of some tuna enhanced by 1000 Island sauce and the whole meal proved to be quite quick to prepare as well as being tasty. We had a quiet afternoon but treated ourselves to listening to the outstanding Canadian pianist Glen Gould playing some Mozart sonatas. We have a boxed set of this performer playing every piano sonata that Mozart composed and the whole set came along as part of the bid I successfully made for the 48 strong collection of CDs about three weeks ago now.

Two stories caught my eye this evening, one national and the other more local. The national story was highlighting the activities of British Gas who were employing some agents to force pre-payment gas meters on consumers who had run foul of their systems and who installed meters for these really poor payers. What was shocking, though, was the way that British Gas (or the agents they deployed) used a local locksmith to gain access to a property in which they were going to install a meter and the video clip showed the pleasure that they showed when gaining forcible access in this way, coupled with brutal attitudes towards the poor (in every sense) customers who had this treatment foisted upon them. The local story concerned a statue known as the ‘Knife Angel’ which after a tour of several towns is going to be installed outside Gloucester Cathedral. The statue is contructed from knives that have come into the possession of the police and rather than being destroyed, they have been used to construct this dramatic statue. Meg and I have actually seen this when it was located outside Chester Cathedral about a year or so ago and we can only hope that the prominent display of this statue has the desired deterrent effect. The local news item focussed on a local youth who had been prominent in the Gloucester area in trying to get knives off the streets of the city.

Today has seemed an odd day in many ways. It is the day upon which our domestic help calls around and we are always pleased to see her. She had walked to our house because there was a beautiful clear blue sky when she set off from home so it seemed as the day was going to be good for a pleasant walk. But by the time Meg and I were ready for our walk, the sky had clouded over and there was quite a biting wind. Nonetheless, we were determined to make the best of the day and hence we prepared our flask of coffee and our elevenses and set off for the park. Having got there, it was not pleasant sitting in a cold wind to drink our coffee but nonetheless we did do so before home beckoned. On the way home, I knocked on the door of a friend who lives down the road and is the principal flower arranger/organiser at out local church. She did not happen to be in but I would like to have a quick discussion as an item occurred in the church meeting that was held last night where she might like to learn the flavour of the discussions that were aired in the committee last night.

In the late morning, we had just started to prepare vegetables for the midday meal when the doorbell rang as it was the appointed day for our hourdresser to call. We have a planning white board board in our kitchen and on this we record all of the forthcoming events which is particular useful to us. The problem today was that the last time I had updated the board, my fingers must have rubbed out the dry-wiper entry for the fact that our hairdresser was calling around today and hence when she arrived at the door, she was completely unexpected. Today was quite a long session because Meg was having a perm and this process takes the best part of a couple of hours. But Meg is very pleased with the results of the perm and I get my own hair cut in some of the pauses within the various stages. Eventually, we had our dinner which was partly prepared and cooked but had to wait until the hairdresser was finished – so this created quite a large hole in the middle of the day.

Today was the day when several categories of public sector workers were on a one day strike in a semi-coordinated move.
Up to half a million workers, including teachers, train drivers, airport, university staff and civil servants, went on strike on what was nicknamed ‘Walkout Wednesday’. The UK faced its biggest day of mass action for more than a decade. There is an evident trial of strength last seen, probably, in the government vs. the mineworkers in the 1980’s. In disputes like this, both sides appeal to the public and, in the long term, which side seems to get and retain public sector support will gain the upper hand. What is amazing about the current set of disputes is that, despite the evident inconvenience, public support for the striking workers seems to have been quite constant – and according to the latest opinion poll may well have increased by a degree or so. But this is the first time that the education sector has been hit in a really big way so it would not be surprising if public support starts to ebb away from this point on. The point being made by the striking teachers is that we are not just talking about the massive blow to living standards in the past year but a decade of less than inflation pay rises. In addition, particularly in the case of teachers, the increasing work pressures and bureaucracy as well as shortage of teachers in key areas are additional sources of contention. It is hard to predict how this particular dispute will play out but there are not even glimmers as to which side might ‘blink’ first.

After the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi for breaking the ministerial code, a lot of attention is now being paid to the Deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab. Some two dozen complaints of bullying have now been laid againt this minister and they are being investigated at this moment. The sheer volume of complaints and the new ‘mantra’ of ensuring that due process is completed means that that a decision in this case may well be some weeks off. There is a briefing war going on on both sides with one side claiming that Sunak must have been aware of these allegations of bullying before appointment but the counter-argument is that No. 10 claims that the PM was never formally told. And, as a complicating factor, we have the case of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who was sacked by Liz Truss for a breach of the ministerial code (using inappropriate i.e insecure methods of electronic communication for government business) only to be reappointed by Sunak some six days after the initial sacking. It is inevitable that commentators are observing a common thread in all of the transgressions, which is that there seems to be an inability to comply with any kind of rule-governed behaviour. The impression given (as with Johnson’s ‘partygate’) is that there one rule for most of the population which is blithely ignored by Cabinet Ministers.

Meg and I look forward to Tuesday mornings because we typically meet some of ur pre-pandemic friends in our regular visit to the Waitrose cafe. When we arrived, I saw one of the regular Waitrose staff who is regularly in charge of the flowers and shrubs section and wondered why today they seemed to be overflowing with all kinds of products. She informed me that they were starting to get ready for Valentines day which will be in two weeks time or so. In common with many other outlets, they were getting ready in plenty of time. I suggested to her that we should rename it to ‘hanky panky’ day, which term I gather dates from about 1841 so is nearly two centuries old. I do not think the store will take up my suggesstion but my contact within the store expressed surprise that I had never engaged in sending valentines (apart from to my old friend who has since died when I pretended it came from his very first girlfriend whose name he indisceetly imparted to me. I sent him disguised valentines for several years but he never let on that he knew that I was the sender although the card that I sent him did do the rounds of his family) Once we sat down for our coffee, it was like a gathering of the clans because eventually three of the old regular i.e. pre-pandemic crowd turned up and we had a good laugh and joke with each other. As locals from the same part of town, more or less, we were discussing some of the local issues to do with car parking and the nuisance that it causes. One of our number was highly indignant because she lived in a property at one time under the control of the local authority and for the last fort years there have been large stones situated outide her house which might have been decorative but have the function of stopping casual parking in front of her house. But a van had reversed into one of these stones and then complained to the local authority even though he was technically trespassing onto their property. Some ‘jobs worth’ in the local authority had arranged for the stones to be removed even though they had been there for decades whereupon people now started to park half on the road and half on the grass thus allowing their vehicles to transgress on the area previously occupied by the stones. I suggested that she write to the council suggesting that they restore the site to the ‘status quo ante’ and also try to enlist the help of her local councillor to whom this ought to be a bread and butter issue but I do not hold out much hope. After a jolly hour together, we all went on our way and I prepared for my weekly Pilates class which is a regular fixture on a Tuesday. On the way down into town, I left five minutes early so that I could go to an ATM and also dive into our local Asda from which store I buy one or two items not easily obtainable elsewhere. As I had not visited the store for a few weeks, some of the things I wanted either could not be located without a great deal of searching or were in a different place because they had reorganised where things are on the shelves and therefore they took some searching which took the time I did not have. I located three of the four things I wanted and abandoned the search for the last item – I suppose it is one of the frustrations of life that stores reorganise themselves on a regular basis but I personally do find it frustrating, particularly for items that you buy very infrequently.

There has been an important report by the IMF this morning which has coincided more or less exactly with the third anniversary of Brexit i.e. the date upon we formally left the EU. In the latest update of its economic forecasts, the IMF says it expects the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) to contract by 0.6% in 2023. To add further humiliation for the chancellor and prime minister, most other countries around the world saw their forecasts upgraded. Downing Street has insisted that the UK’s economy is strong despite the International Monetary Fund’s warning that Britain’s economy will go into reverse this year and will fare worse than all other advanced nations – including Russia that is in the middle of a war and subjected to many international sanctions as a consequence. In its latest World Economic Outlook update, the IMF downgraded its UK gross domestic product (GDP) forecast once again, predicting a contraction of 0.6% against the 0.3% growth pencilled in last October. In the media discussion today, the reaction of Tory MPs and others on the extreme right is fascinating. Almost to a man (and a woman) they just refuse to accept the report of the IMF because it does not conform to their world view. An important factor in the IMF downgrade was the damage done to the UK economy by the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss who tanked the economy and had to be ejected after six weeks. Ater journalists put the report to Liz Truss asking for her to comment, she just refused point blank – that is to say, she literally had no answer to the criticisms made of her.

Today being a Monday and a day when we did not anticipate much social contact, Meg and I decided that we would try a walk in the park as we do not seem to have done this for several days. Whilst we have taken the opportunity to meet up with friends and acquaintances in the Waitrose cafe we have done so but today seemed as good a day as any to resume what has been our normal pattern of activity over the past year or so. Today beckoned fair and the weather seemed to be a lot milder than of late. However, by the time we were installed upon our customary park bench, an especially icy wind seemed to spring up from somewhere so we drank a hasty coffee and then beat a hasty retreat home. We were not particularly sorry to do this as I could get Meg warmed up with a bit of buttered toast and apricot jam and we were just in time for the daily Politics show at 12.15. As might be surmised, the analysis was very much upon the sequelae of the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi and the response of the PM, Rishi Sunak, who seems to acted decisively. By all accounts, the report landed in the PM’s inbox by 7.00am and within the hour Zahawi had been sacked for multiple breaches of the Ministerial Code. When you read the account of the Prime Minister’s advisor on ethics, Sir Laurie Magnus, (his letter/report printed in full in ‘The Times’) then seven breaches of the Ministerial code were detailed and they are nearly all repetitions of the same principle i.e. the failure to inform either the Cabinet Office or the Permanent Secretaries of various ministries in which he had held office of the fact that his tax affairs were under active investigation by HMRC. Zahawi’s defense is that he thought that he was just having ‘discussions’ with the Inland revenue but not being ‘investigated’ – but this defence has cut no ice with the independent investigator or with media commentators. It is a strange feature of modern politics that the offense of actually hiding £27 million in an offshore account and then failing to declare it to the Inland Revenue was not in itself the sacking offence but it was the cover-up or the failure to come clean about these investigations. So like the Watergate enquiry that was to prove the downfall of Richard Nixon, it was not so much the original offence but its cover up which was to prove the decisive offence. Students of British political history may well remember the Profumo affair in about 1962 when Jack (John) Profumo was having relationships with two ‘good time girls’ Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, whose favours were also being shared with a Russian spy. These relationships were not to prove the decisive events that led to Profumo’s downfall and subsequent resignation – the actual offence was the fact of lying to the House of Commons about it.

This afternoon we are having a quiet afternoon, playing some of our favourite music. We have just listened to Mozart’s ‘Grand Mass in C minor’ This was written for his newly-wedded wife, Constanze, but Mozart never wrote all the sections needed for a mass, and the first performance—with Constanze as soloist at the Abbey of St. Peter’s back in Salzburg— may have used supplemental music. Yet even in its unfinished form, says Zohn, ‘The music is Mozart at his most dazzling. You get Mozart the opera composer, Mozart the composer of sacred vocal music, and Mozart the explorer of Baroque counterpoint…all wrapped into one.’ Tomorrow is going to be quite a busy day for us one way or another and I am spending some time running off and reading some documents for a meeting that I have at our church tomorrow evening.

Some recent research has just revealed how people are coping with the cost of living crisis as inflation has exceeded 10% although it may now be down very slightly. The very first economy to make has been streaming services and Britons cancelled £2 million of streaming services last year in order to make ends meet. It is also reported that young people are struggling more with the cost of living crisis than the COVID pandemic and the younger generation are anxious in particular about the costs of having children. But we are living in times when people have grown up to accept a certain standard of living and may not be very knowledgeable about the ways in which one might economise. As a university student, we all know that the secret to live economically was to invest in things like a bag of rice or a sack of potatoes to keep you going for weeks and we all knew how to prepare a cauliflower cheese for one meal a week. A small joint of meat would be cooked for the Sunday joint and then quite a lot was reserved for meals for two more days in the week. The remaining small fragments of meat (or bits of a chicken carcass) would be thrown into a curry much later in the week. In fact, having prepared curries in our student days, we are still in the habit (half a century later) of preparing one each week using the small amounts of protein provided by the meat or chicken fragments.

Today being a Sunday my normal habit is to get up quite early and go down to collect the Sunday newspaper before settling down to watch the politics programme on BBC1. However, we knew that later on today we were going to meet our University of Birmingham friend in Waitrose (as we had arranged yesterday) so this morning I allowed myself the luxury of an extra couple of hours in bed. Then we collected our newspaper just before popping into Waitrose where there appeared to be lots of families enjoying a Sunday morning treat. Our University of Birmingham friend always has lots of topics of conversation to discuss and today we settled upon sporting issues. As he is a keen supporter of our local rugby team here in Bromsgrove, we were discussing the likely impact of the rule changes in rugby that we may see come into effect in the Six Nations competition which starts on Saturday. The new rule, which has been introduced for the best of reasons to reduce or minimise the chances of head injury, is not to allow any tackles above the waist. How this is going to be interpreted and put into effect by referees might actually prove enormously difficult, with the best will in the world. On a rugby field, opposing players are likely to be running at speed and/or be in a semi crouched or a bent forward position so the new rule change might be very difficult both for players, coaches and referees alike. So after this, we both discovered in the past that we had been followers of Leeds United football club which is not a much followed team outside Leeds these days. But back in the 1960’s the half-back line was Jack Charlton (Bobby Charlton’s brother), Billy Bremmer and Johnny Giles. In addition, Paul Reaney played at full back as well as Bell (first name forgotten) and Norman Hunter whilst Peter Lorimer often took penalties as it was reckoned that he had the hardest (and therefore fastest) shots in football and penalties were almost completely unsaveable, even if the goalie dived in the right direction. The legendary half back line and defence were so good as it was said by some of the Leeds supporters that Gary Sprake (the Leeds goalkeeper) was regarded as somewhat fallible even though he was good enough to play for Wales and therefore the half backs ensured that the ball never got anyhere near him. The legendary nature of this defence (and Leeds were not a pretty team to watch) is that occasional supporters such as myself and our University of Birmingham friend can still remember the names of the players some half a century later.

Before we even got as visitng the Waitrose cafe the news had broken, two minutes into the Lorna Kuennsberg program, that Nadhim Zahawi had been sacked earlier that morning. The report from the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministerial ethics had reported to Rishi Sunak that Zahawi had committed several severe breaches of the ministerial code and therefore Rishi Sunak found it easy to dismiss him immediately. Perhaps conscious of the fact that he has been judged as weak and indecisive, Rishi Sunak did not give the minister the chance to resign but there was an immediate and decisive sacking. Most of the commentators and members of the politicl elite thought that this should have happened days, if not weeks, ago, The interesting question now is where Zahawi will resign as an MP or be deselected by his Stratford consistuency – in ‘vox pop’ interviews aired over the last few days, he has little to no support locally so I should not be surprised if he stands at the next election and then leaves politics altogether.

This afternoon, Meg and I watched Jane Austin’s ‘Emma‘. The only reason that I mention this is because it was the book that I studied for my GCSE ‘O’-level in English Language. The opening sentence of ‘Emma‘ and I quote, runs as follows: ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her’ I remember at the time going through an ‘angry young man’ time in my adolescence and upon reading this first sentence my lip curled and I wondered how on earth I could find anything remotely interesting given this start to the novel. In particular, I could think of nothing in the ‘handsome, clever, rich with a comfortable home’ with which I could possible identify. I think when you study a book for ‘O’ level, you have read the text minutely several times and then built up a mental image of the characters in your mind. So it is especially interesting to see how all of this is portrayed on film because, in my day, you never had the opportunity to see a film of the classic novel chosen for you. In retrospect, I still sometimes wonder whether Jane Austin can be fully appreciated by 15 year old male students of whatever ethnicity and I am unsure whether Jane Austin is still on the curriculum for school pupils of this age.

Once we had got ourselves up and breakfasted and enjoyed our weekly diet of Alan Titchmarsh on ClassicFM, we make our way down to Waitrose and met up with the same pre-pandemic friend with whom we had had a chat yesterday. She was telling us of the frustrations that she was havng with the ‘Power of Attorney’ document which she was trying to register with some of he appropriate financial institutions. In one of them, which I shall not name, the institution should have taken a photocopy for their records but only succeeded in losing one of the pages of the original document (which required another visit to the solicitor to replace the missing page) after which the financial institution in question did not succeed in making a legible copy of the document in question and our friend had to be called back again with her document for fresh photocopies to be made. Whether the whole of this transaction has ended with a happy resolution I am unable to say but the root of the problem always seem to be that personnel do not pay sufficient atention to detail and hence errors occur and accumulate. Certainly, if one were to take a survey of the transactions that ‘ordinary’ people have with the financial entities with which they have dealings, I am pretty sure that most of us would have some tales of woe to recount. I would surnmise that with the prevalence of financial fraud not to mention outright money-laundering that quite obsessive bureaucratic procedures have been put in place which are onerous in the extreme for us, the law-abiding, whilst probably not deterring the professional money launderers that the procedures are designed to prevent. That London is at the centre of dirty money is quite widely accepted, but the crisis in Ukraine has once again put the issue in the spotlight according to Thomas Mayne, visiting fellow at Chatham House, an independent think tank that focuses on international affairs. Transparency International UK recently reported that such ‘questionable funds’ could be to the value of GBP 6.7 billion. Properties in the central London areas like the City of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea form a huge part of this value. After listening to our friend and her travails, our University of Birmingham friend turned up by prior arrangement. We are swapping little bits of electrical equipment with each other but nothing extremely exciting (a battery tester and a little transformer power supply) There are several little technical questions I wanted to ask my friend as his technical engineerng knowledge is evidently far superior to mine. We will probably meet again tomorrow in Waitrose and start off here we left off today. We both share an interest in rugby (football) and as the Six Nations will start off next weekend, no doubt we will have a lot to discuss.

There are several stories doing the rounds at the moment about some of the turmoils happening within the BBC. In both TV and radio, the story is more or the less the same. Under the pressure of rampant inflation, the license fee model under threat and a feeling that the BBC is top heavy, then a series of reorganisations seem to be taking place. This is having the effect that even seasoned and well-respected journalists and presenters are having to reapply for their own jobs. It will come as no surprise that any presenters that come into the categories of being white, male and middle aged do not fare well in these interviews even though their careers have been exemplary. I share some feeling for these personnel because even in my last post I was constantly being told how expensive I was with the implicit message that two junior and inexperienced saff could be appointed at the bottom of the respective salary scales for the same amount of money as my salary. If this is happening all over the country, it may help to explain why there seems to be an exodus of staff aged in thir fifties who have either been given the ‘heave-ho’ by their employing organsations or decided that there is a better life out there once one reaches the stage where the mortgage has been paid off and children have passed through university.

I always have the same feeling on Saturdays that big political ‘exposés’ are often revealed in the Sunday newspapers and evidently Saturday is the day when the political journalists are sharpening their quills, as it were. Sometimes it happens that the revelations are such that the politician feeling the heat feels that that they have no option but to resign sooner rather than later. Evidently Nadhim Zahawi is awaiting the results of the investigation into his tax affairs which may well take a fortnight to conduct, but I have a feeling in my bones that he will be gone long before then. Apart from his tax affairs, there is information that his wife received a £30 million unsecured loan (from whom?) which was not declared in the Register of Members Interests The loans were made to a business called Zahawi and Zahawi, and reportedly used to fund part of a large property portfolio including commercial and retail units in Birmingham, Brighton, London and Walton-on-Thames in Surrey.

So the end of another week and we were looking forward to see which, if any, of our acquaintances would turn up to Waitrose for a morning coffee. We did coincide with one of our pre-pandemic friends and as we did the last time we met, we exchanged some words of mutual support for how to care for ailing spouses. Our friend seems to be having a particularly hard time at the moment as she herself has health problems of her own and the assistance that she often needs to give to her husband does not fall within the window of time slots afforded by the care slots allocated to her. I told her the story of my mother who, when she was recovering from a broken hip and needed a care package at home, often had some difficulties with the care assistants who had been allocated to her. Her increasing deafness undoubtedly made for all kinds of communication difficulties. The thing that she found distressing (and I suspect that this is a very widely shared feeling) is that she was never quite sure when the care workers would make an appearance. There never seemed to be a regular care worker and therefore it was difficult to establish any kind of social relationship. I suspect that my mother had great difficulties in making her needs felt and from what we know of accounts of care workers themselves, they only have small increments of time in which to perform whatever duties thay have been allocated in the care plan. The question always remains, of course, whether we walk exactly in the footsteps of our parents when we approach their age. It does seem, though, as though we come to inherit the worst rather than the best of the characteristics of our parents but hopefully we can all learn from their example either positively or negatively. When we got home, we cooked a very nice dinner of smoked haddock with mangetouts and a baked potato and, as an experiment, tried a small smidgeon of sweet chilli sauce to see how it would work out (which, in the vent, was very well indeed).

This afternoon, we had a quiet afternoon as we were were expecting the visit of our chiropodist with whom we have a monthly appointment to help to keep us both super mobile. Before she was due in the late afternoon, though, we did enjoy a little concert of some Palestrina of which we just happened to have a CD. We both find this baroque music extremely relaxing. Primarily known for his masses and motets, which number over 105 and 250 respectively, Palestrina had a long-lasting influence on the development of church and secular music in Europe, especially on the development of counterpoint. This may well not be everybody’s ‘cup of tea’ but once in a while, it is an extremely good listen. I am still experimenting with all of the facilities on my Polaroid BoomBox and one which is extremely useful is the Bluetooth option. This means that I can play any of the hundred or so tracks that I have (somewhow) stored on my very much outdated iPhone selectable from anywhere in the room. The actual range of Bluetooth is some 10 metres or 33′ but I have never experimented with anything other than a few metres.

I follow Beth Rigby, the Sky News interviewer and analyst quite closely because she often seems to get to the heart of a story way before the BBC or other channels. She is now saying (as are many other commentators) that Rishi Sunak’s integrity is taking a hit as he prolongs the pain over the Tory party chairman. As one minister pointed out to her on Wednesday, what really mattered here was not the conflict of interest of Mr Zahawi being the chancellor while he was in dispute with the HMRC or what the PM knew when. What matters here is the naked optics of a cabinet minister receiving around £27m that he did not initially pay tax on when people were struggling to make ends meet. It is always interesting when fellow Cabinet ministers do not rush to the support of any of their colleagues when it evident to practically everybody that there is no long term future in the government. Meg and I tuned in to ‘Question Time‘ on BBC1 last night to get the view of ‘the man in the street’ (which happened to come from Scunthorpe on this occasion) and all of the panelists and the vast majority of the audience wanted Nadhim Zahawi to go now – one or two audience members thought we should wait until the results of the enquiry are known (like Rishi Sunak’s desperate effforts to play for time) but the general mood of the public is clear by now. Sir Rod Stewart, a prominent Conservative party supporter until hitherto, has now had enouh and has got into contact with Sky News to indicate (yesterday) that he had changed his allegiance as he said: ‘Change the bloody government.’ Naturally, this is like manna from heavan for the Labour Party and for us most of us observers the question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ the resignation and ultimate fall from grace will happen.

Thursday is my shopping day and I was pleased to get going well before 8.00am without having to defrost the car’s windscreen – I think that the temperature overnight was exactly 0 degrees so not cold enough for a heavy frost to form. After I got the shopping home and unpacked, Meg and I breakfasted whilst listening to Hayden’s ‘Creation’ which disks arrived this morning. The version I got must have been the fullest version as it came on 2 CDs and I felt that I was supporting home industries as a (very youthful looking) Simon Rattle was conducting the Birmingham Philharmonic. I found the program booklet extremely informative as Hayden wrote it intending it to be sung in eiher English or German. I think it might have been first performed in Vienna (to rapturous acclaim,evidently in German) but apparently the Englist text was not so easy to adapt to the natural phrasing of the musical score and the first attempt tranlating from the German was a rather botched affair – subsequently, this has been worked upon and the English text now seems to sit nicely within the musical parameters. By the time we had breakfasted, the morning was progressing somewhat so we decided just to have a wander up and down the High Street in Bromsgrove instead of doing a circuit of the park. When we go to the end of the High Street, I looked inside the Age Concern furniture shop as I am on the lookout for a little occasional table and have, in the past, been extremely successful in a delightful CD cabinet/display case which they had on offer and is now sitting in our ‘music room’. After that, it was a case of getting home, having a cup of warming soup and then progressing on with our quite simple lunch of quiche. I prepared some cavolo nero and I had some tomatoes spare which, after a quick microwave, I dressed with a little mayonnaise (on one) and spicy chile sauce on the other. I only mention this because the results of what might be quite a banal lunch turned out to be exceptionally tasty so I must have done something right.

This afternoon as been a ‘musical concert’ afternoon which drags us away from the TV for an hour or so. In the spirit of experimentation, I have now relocated my (not so little) Polaroid Boombox on a chessboard (made, I believe by my father) and this sits on one of those fabric storage units bought with our suite decades ago. I am not sure if these are properly called a ‘pouffe’ or not but they are relatively large and contain things such as CDs and DVDs. I think they were manufactured to be exactly the same height as the sitting position of the settee and the chairs so that they form a natural extension to the furniture if you want to use it in that particular way. We have two of these which sit snugly on either side of the fireplace and fortunately, they are both on castors the more easily to be wheeled about. My point here is that I can pull out the unit for want of a better term with the CD player on the top of it and thus gaining a metre and angling the CD player somewhat means that we can have the volume of sound we would get from a full scale HiFi. It must be a tribute to the quality of the electronics design and/or the speakers that even at maximum volume (which is not needed) I cannot discern any distortion of the sound even when the volume is turned up to a maximum. I have been enjoying Cecilia Bartoli singing Mozart arias and as well as being a source of great pleasure, her incredible phrasing and high notes helps to test out the capabilities of the Polaroid to its maximum.

The Zahawi affair is rumbling on and is likely to do so for another ten days or so. It is reported that Rishi Sunak wants the whole enquiry process (‘to establish the facts’) to be cleared up as quickly as possible but this affair is not going to go away. The media and the news bulletins are running the story constantly and occasionally there are some contradictory accounts- so there must be some ‘porky pies’ (= lies) going on somewhere. The Times reported that the PM was ‘livid’ that he not been properly informed of Zahawi’s tax affairs when appointing him as Conservative party chairman but this has just been flatly denied by No. 10. However, in a meeting with MPs on a select committee, the chief of HMRC has stated that ‘there are no penalties for innocent errors in your tax affairs’ But the concept of ‘carelessness’ in tax law is equivalent to that of ‘negligence’ in other spheres of life and from this we can conclude that Nadhim Zahawi has not just made a simple mistake but committed a transgression for which a penalty is payable and which he has, in fact, paid. So this would appear on the face of it to be an admission of guilt even before any enquiries are actually concluded.

Today is the day when our domestic help calls around so, as always, we have a good chat and a cup of tea before she starts on her weekly round. This morning I showed her the little German weather station which I purchased when we were in Droitwich last Thursday. The weather station deploys a thermometer, the barometer which is the largest dial in the centre and finally a hygrometer and my researches on the web show that it is a fairly well known make of West German manufacture and identical versions are still on sale via eBay. We were quite keen to watch Prime Ministers Questions today at 12.00pm so we had a brief walk in the park, once we had picked up our daily newspaper. We bumped into two people in the park who we know quite well by sight. As they were regular dog walkers they were having a chat whilst their respective dogs had a romp around. Eventually, though, we got home and we were wondering whether the Prime Minister had forced the resigation of Nadhim Zahawi after the tax avoidance scandal where he paid nearly £5 million to HMRC in past taxes including a 30% penalty. The attack on the PM by Keir Starmer was fairly effective but there was no knockout blow and, as we suspected, the PM by instituting an enquiry into the tax affairs of the Conservative Party chairman, was either buying himself some time or kicking the ball into the long grass (possibly both). There was no rush to defend Nadhim Zahawi and it is reported that Conservative MPs may be losing some faith with their parliamentary colleague but as often happens in politics, a certain amount of playing for time may work to the advantage of the government. A new development has been added to the story this afternoon as No.10 has refused to say whether Rishi Sunak has ever had to pay a tax penalty arguing that an individual’s tax affairs should remain confidential. But the same question has also been asked of Keir Starmer the Labour Party Opposition Leader, and the reply has been received that this is not known but the spokesmen would get back to the enquirer in due course.

The foreign news is dominated by the decision of West Germany to let Ukraine have some Leopard 2 tanks. This policy shift has occurred after a great deal of soul searching and some understandable ‘angst’ in view of their past history. However, it may well be that a certain log jam may well now be released. There are rumours that if the US contributes some of its Abrams tanks after the West German decision as now the Poles may commit some of their Leopard 2 tanks (as the manufacturers and the West German government have to give permission) and other European governments may well follow suit – and a number as much as 100 has been mooted but this may be optimistic. The Ukrainians are saying that they need 300 tanks altogether but once they have a goodly number, then the Leopard tanks can probably outrun, outgun and prove to be generally superior to their Soviet counterparts. So if we have an old fashioned tank battle (like the North African theatre in the Second World War) then the Leopard tank is likely to prevail. The military implications of all of this is that the Ukrainians can move from defense to a more aggressive strategy which can gradually push the Soviets out of Ukraine altogether. But all of his will not happen immediately as the critical element is the training of the tank crews and this takes a certain amount of time. In fact, it is said that the American Abrams tanks are so bristling with technology that the training times are likely to take perhaps months rather than weeks before they cen be deployed. So committing American Abrams tanks may be more of a political support move as Joe Biden has just announced that training troops to use this complex technology may well take a long time.

A new report released today has documented the stark differences between North and South in our country – and why levelling up may never be achieved. The North of England receives one of the lowest levels of investment among advanced economies, a think tank (Institute for Public Policy Research) has said. Greece would be the only OECD nation to see less public and private investment, if the region was a country, according to a new IPPR North report. Researchers found the UK as a whole ranks 35th out of the 38 OECD countries in terms of receiving the least investment. Slovakia, Poland and Hungary all enjoy more investment than the UK. If the OECD average was applied to the UK for 2017 to 2020, £397bn more would have been invested. Meanwhile, the exisiting ‘levelling up’ shows all of the examples of what the Americans term ‘pork barrel’ politics. Pork barrel, or simply pork, is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to an MP’s constituency (e.g. Richmond in North Yorkshire which has received funding and which just happens to be the constituency of the Prime Minister himself)