Today seemed to be a day a little like yesterday except that the temperature might have drifted a degree or so lower. But Tuesday is the day when we looking forward to having some chats with acquaintances and friends in the Waitrose cafe. As soon as we got in, we noticed a couple with whom we used to be in regular contact both before the pandemic and also during it via FaceTime. We had heard via a mutual friend that they had moved from one flat to another and their most recent abode seems to meet their needs somewhat better as the husband is a wheelchair user and therefore things like ease of access is very important if not crucial for them. The move seems to have gone fairly smoothly but they did have to spend a week or so in a hotel in the transition from their former flat to their present one and the conveyancing firm that they used seems to have been problematic for them as well. We quickly brought each other up-to-date with our various bits of news but they could not stop for a longer chat as they had other things to do. We saw another of our friends that we regularly see on a Tuesday morning, but this too proved to be a ‘hello and goodbye’ affair. On the way home, we called in to see one of our Kidderminster Road friends as there was a church related issue that we needed to discuss. Again, we conducted our business on the doorstep because on a Tuesday, I always need a fairly quick turn around as it is my Pilates day. I had a pleasant walk down into town followed by a period of slight frustration when an item of clothing that I wanted to purchase for Meg did not seem to be in stock where we had bought it previously – thus was it ever so but it is surprising how often the shelves are filled with lots of things that you do not want but empty of the things you are actually looking for. My Pilates class which is small (there are four of us regulars in this particular class) ran true to form and then I return home for a somewhat delayed lunch of fishcakes and microwaved vegetables.

The Turkey-Syria earthquake continues to appall as the images fill our TV screens today. There are always some heart-warming stories of children being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building but these will evidently lessen as the days roll on. One aspect of this particular earthquake is particularly distressing both for the participants and also for us viewers. It seems to be the case that relatives, standing besides the remains of a collapsed building, can often hear the cries of people from inside the ruins crying out for help but the scale of the destruction is so enormous that there are no resources to help to locate them and to dig them out of the rubble. Evidently, people do what they can with their bare hands but I imagine that knowing a family member is calling out for you but is unrescuable must surely only intensify their grief. The latest estimate of the deathtoll is about 7,000 but some estimates are that the eventual toll may be 20,000. One particular dramatic story was the rescue of a baby born in the collapsed ruins and still attached by the umbilical cord to its dead mother. Hopefully there will be other ‘miracle’ chidrn extracted from the rubble and chunks of concrete. Here at home the media is still reporting the desperate search for the woman who disappeared when walking her dog besides a river in Lancashire. The most sophisticated underwater sonar is now being deployed and it is being said that such technology can identify even sticks and stones on the river bed. The specialised firm who are deploying this technology think that if there is a body of the woman within the river, they should be able to locate it after about three days of searching. So far, no clues of any kind have emerged and the police say that they are acting on 500 separate pieces of information but there is nothing that as yet is worthy of note. Properties bordering the river have apparently been searched and the police are tring to keep an open mind but so far, they seem to have precious lttle to go on.

It seems that most of the nation, including ourselves, were gripped and engrossed in the concluding, and final, instalment of ‘Happy Valley’ based upon the life and work of a police sergeant in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. The concluding episode did resolve several of the outstanding, intertwined story lines in an interesting and unpredictable fashion but I will say no more at this point. But the point has been made that perhaps the police themelves could do well to study the series and the way that policing was deployed to see if there are any elements of good practice from which they could learn. This may be a tall order but the writer of the series, Sally Wainwright, did a magnificent job in making her story lines both credible and absorbing.

The weather forecast warned us that today was going to be one of those clear and bright days as we are subject to a high pressure system at the moment. Actually, the Spanish have an expression for this which is ‘febrero loco’ or ‘Mad February’. I have some first hand knowledge of this because in my working life, I spent a term teaching at the Complutense University in Madrid. Here I would typically set off to catch the metro and then a bus to get to the relevant University campus and the days always started off being crisp and cold and pretty dark at that hour in the morning. I taught from about 9.00am to 11.30 and then after some coffee returned back to the Hall of Residence in which I was lodged. As I returned home, the sun had arisen and there was quite pleasant, almost warm sun by midday which made the journey home very pleasant. I seem to remember that in the metro journeys that I had, first thing in the morning the carriages were silent as people were contemplating the day’s work ahead of them. But by midday they had relaxed and the carriage was full of chatter as some people returned home for lunch (but they would return back home for an afternoon shift from about 4.00 until maybe 7.00pm). The other thing that I particularly remember about those metro jouneys was that the trains were full of Madrileños i.e. people who were born in or near the capital and were predominantly white with just a smattering of Latin American hispanics. But there is a massive contrast with the London Tube which is about as cosmopolitan as it is possible to get, with a massive diversity of ethnicities, skin colours and languages. Returning to this country, though, Meg and I were happy to get to the park once we had picked up our newspaper. The air was pretty cool but completely still which meant you could simultaneously feel the cool of the air but also get a hint of pale spring sunshine on one’s forehead. As we have by now come to expect, the park was full of dog walkers and one of the regulars is a ‘labradoodle’ or a mixture of labrador and poodle. But the fine looking dog looks more poodle than labrador and when let off the lead, he has a series of similar doggy friends and they love chasing each other in huge circles around the park. Evidently, the dog owners know each other well and ensure that their dogs do not get out of control but there was a great deal of yapping and barking which was just the doggy equivalent of ‘joie de vivre’ on a morning like this. We had some pleasant elevenses and chatted with seveal of our acquaintances, all of us appreciating the weather for what it was.

When we returned home we cooked ourselves some lunch and then watched, with a degree of fascinated horror, some of the unfolding stories of the huge earthquakes that have hit Turkey and Syria. Sky News are reporting that nearly 3,000 people have been killed and thousands more injured after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and several aftershocks caused widespread destruction in Turkey and Syria. The earthquake struck at 4.17 in the morning when most people would have been in bed and this has contributed to the enormous death toll. Very often when earthquakes strike, deaths are reported in their hundreds but on this occasion the deathrate was immediately reported as in the thousands so it was known within minutes that this earthquake was huge and extensive. The fact that it was quite shallow within the earth crust adds greatly to the destructive power and I heard the gographical impact of the earthquake being likened to a tear in a piece of paper and the resultant destruction extending over hundreds of kilometres. There were, in fact, two earthquakes, one of 7.8 magnitude followed by one of 7.7 magnitude impacting not just Syria and Turkey and the impact has been felt further afield, including in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The reaction of most countries to this apocalyptic earthquake has been an immediate offer of assistance from a host of European countries but it is now nighfall in Turkey which will hamper rescue efforts. Another factor in the destruction is that the first earthquake may well have weakened some already shoddily constructed buildings which the second eathquake soon caused to collapse. One particularly dramatic of mobile phone footage shows the whole of a block of flats collapsing in about 10 seconds flat.

Meanwhile, back at home the largest number of NHS personnel on strike has had a big effect upon the hospital sector. Some 80,000 appointments and 11,000 operations have been cancelled on the biggest NHS strike day and the nurses are to to strike for a further day tomorrow. This is a massive trial of strength and it is hard to predict the outcome as of now. I have a feeling that the bad feelings generated by these disputes may last for quite a long time. The strikes are not just about pay – the failure to recruit sufficient staff in the past few years for whatever reason (Brexit? low pay?) has entailed massively increased workloads and workspace stress.

Today we knew that we were going to see our University of Birmingham friend later on in the morning so I did not feel the complusion to leap out of bed and walk down to get the newspaper early on in the day. So we had a fairly leisurely breakfast before we hit the road this morning. After we picked up the newspaper, we had a little bit of time before we were due to meet with our friend so we paid a quick visit to the hardware store that I visited yesterday as I could do with one more of the little containers that they had in stock. I thought that this was going to be a quick ‘in and out’ job as I knew exactly where the little baskets I wanted were shelved. Hoever, that was yesterday and today I could not immediately find them as the store had already re-shelved some of their stock and therefore they needed a bit of hunting around for them. However, they were located at last and I purchased what I wanted. We then spent the best part of an hour with our friend in the Waitrose coffee bar and the store was particularly full of flowers and related ‘romantic’ items as Valentines day is early in the week just after next. Then it was a case of getting home and having some quiet time with the Sunday newspapers before we started to cook the Sunday lunch. This was simple but tasty affair of ham, primo cabbage and a baked potato but although it was simple lunch, we nonetheless enjoyed it. In the afternoon, we tuned into the France vs. Italy match which everybody, including ourselves, assumed would be a walkover for the French. But the Italians were enterprising in the extreme and about ten minutes before the end, the Italians were leading by a single point. Then the French scored a try which was not surprising and the Italians needed to score a try to overhaul them. They were awarded a penalty at the very end of the match and ‘all’ they had to do was to kick for touch right next to the corner flag and then in the resulting throw-in organise a maul to get the ball over the line (a frequent tactic) But the Italians made rather a mess of their kick for the corner, made a bigger mess of their own lineout and so the French ran out as winners. But for Italy to push the French as hard as this was amazing and made for a really exciting afternoon of rugby. As the Italians are to play Englnd next weekend, then this match too might be too close to call.

In the political sphere, Liz Truss the ex-Prime Minister who trashed the British economy (for which many of us are now paying in the form of higher mortgages) has written a long, 4000 long article to which the Sunday Telegraph has given prominent position. Liz Truss is arguing that ‘a left wing economics establishment’ foiled and frustrated all of her plans to borrow a lot of money to give handouts to the rich, hoping that this would kickstart the economy. All kinds of media outlights are giving Liz Truss as much time and spce as she wants to defend her premiersip, reckoned to be on of the most incompetent in British political history. It is an interesting reflection upon the media in this country that if Jeremy Corbin had tried a similar defence of his economic philosophy and politics, nobody would have given him the airtime or the print space. The Liz Truss polemic was discussed on the Andrew Neil Show (which has as part of its regular contributors George Osborne and Ed Balls) where it received a predictable mauling. As was mentioned on the programme, the Tory party believes in the operation of free markets and it was the bond market that ‘did for’ Liz Truss when the economy tanked. Professor Danny Blanchflower, who was previously on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, was more damning in his criticism as he said the article was the ‘most appalling nonsense I have ever read’ and rubbished her claim nobody warned her the economy would suffer under her plans. After all, she did sack the senior civil servant in the Treasury who had decades of experience, refused to put her plans before the Office of Budget Responsibility and implied that the Head of the Bank of England had no crediblity. So although Liz Truss claims that ‘nobody warned me’ that is because she had sacked, ignored or sidelined them all.

Tomorrow will see tens of thousands of NHS workers including nurses, in England, and GMB union ambulance workers, in England and Wales, taking industrial action in a dispute over pay and conditions. It is being billed as the biggest strike of NHS personnel in history and there is not the slightest sign that the government will follow the lead of the devolved government in Wales in an attempt to resolve the crisis. It may be that we all have to wait for Budget Day, which will be on Wednesday, 15th March when the rate of inflation may have reduced somewhat and the government feels it can make a pay offer.

Today was the start of a weekend to which we had been looking forward for some time as it was the start of the 6 Nations rugby competition. Rather than a walk in the park this morning, we decided that we would pay a visit to a large multi-product store on the edge of town in order to buy some medicaments and also a couple of little storage baskets. This having been done (and a certain amount of work to remove the extra sticky labels from the same) we returned home to have our elevenses in the comfort of our own home and to have a bit of a read of the newspapers. Then it was a case of having a simple lunch of quiche and vegetables before we settled down for an afternoon of rugby. We are able to watch the whole of the Ireland-Wales match at our leisure but the Englnd-Scotlnd game is another matter. We should be able to watch most of the first half of this match but then our normal church attendance intervenes. We have programmed our PVR on a ‘series record’ and, in theory, we should be able to catch the second half of the match but I am not holding my breath over this.

The news media is dominated today by the massive police search for the woman walking her dog in Lanacashire who has disappeared without trace when walking quite near a river bank. After extensive searches, the police ae working on the theory, but it is only a theory, that the woman had slipped into the river and been swept away. It is possible that as the river had quite steeply banked sides that the dog’s ball rolled into the river and that the missing woman may have been trying to retrieve this which accounts for her slip into the water. But all of this is conjecture and it is that is causing some discomforture to her family and friends. A enormous amount of technology seems to be being deployed in the search for the missing woman. We have seen police helicopters, drones, underwater sonar, police frog divers and probably much more that I have not mentioned. So far, not a single clue (such as the dog’s ball?) has been revealed but, in theory, the sonar unit dragged behind the police launch should be able to detect underwater shapes including a body. The police efforts and resources are all concentrated upon this but it may take some days to discern whether this is good police work or whether there may be other explanations. The disappearance of the woman is quite baffling to everybody but in the fullness of time, we may discover what has happened. Just out of interest, I Googled to see how common drownings are in the UK and came across the latest annual figures that suggested that each year there are some 80 drownings by ‘falling in’, a further 73 which are alcohol related and 34 due to swimming in all waters. The point here is that there are nearly 200 drownings a year but hardly any attract the attention afforded to this particular case.

When we returned from church this evening, we had the bowl of soup which is the repast that we always tend to have upon our return and then took our chances with the PVR to see the second half of the England-Scotlnd match. The PVR performed flawlessly and the series record seeme to have worked as it should. Scotlnd won the match in the dying minutes of the game and, I think, deservedly so but in truth there was very little between the two teams. We have some more rugby tomorrow but France vs. Italy is not going to be particularly exciting although next weekend will see France v. Ireland which may well prove the match of the series. Whilst on the subject of TV, the whole nation is on tenterhooks to watch the final episode of the third series of ‘Happy Valley’ at 9.00 tomorrow evening. We have only come lately to the joys of this series based upon a doughty policewoman based in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. Tomorrow night is the last episode of three series and there will no more after tomorrow night. I did read one comment in a newspaper that all actors and producers of TV dramas ought to be made to watch a series of ‘Happy Valley’ to show how the job ought to be done. It is also rumoured that several alternative endings have been filmed so that if any on them is inadvertently leaked, another ending can be substituted.

Tonight it has reported that the Chinese ‘spy’ balloon which has been making its way across the landmass of the United States has been succesfully shot down once the balloon was safely over water. Informed commentators are arguing that this Chinese balloon was a spy mission that went wrong – as for the US shooting it down, it is hard to see any military in a northern European society to allow a transgression of their airspace as egregious as this to go unpunished. One does wonder, though, what parts of the downed balloon the United States will manage to get their hands on to learn exactly what games the Chinese military are playing.

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.