First thing this morning, my package arrived from BT which contains a router and four new specialist phones. Our new service becomes ‘live’ some time on Monday and, in theory, all one has to do is to plug in various leads and off you go. I am sure it is not going to be as simple as this but our son is going to come over in the cool of the evening on Monday night to help us in this venture. Today, we are counting down towards the really horrendous heatwave which is heading our way, moving northwards from the rest of Europe. On Monday and Tuesday next, it appears almost certain that somewhere in the country, a spot will reach 40 degrees celsius. The previous record was 38.7 and this was set in Cambridgeshire. The Met Office have issued a red warning (danger of loss of life)for a great plume of heat hitting Central, Eastern and Southern England. All kinds of warnings are being given, not only to damage to individuals from excessive heat but also to the nation’s infrastucture. Tar seems to be bubbling up from roads, railway lines are in danger of buckling, utility pipes are in danger of cracking and so on. The warnings are so severe on this occasion that I think most of the country will almost ‘de facto’ shut down on Monday and Tuesday. So I think that many people are moderating their behaviour, for example by taking their exercise, including dogs, very early in the morning and then keeping to the coolest place in their houses or gardens during the heat of the day on Monday and Tuesday.

Today was Carnival day in Bromsgrove. We picked up our newspaper by car and could not then get near to our local park because it was let over to Carnival type activities. The normal car parks were out of bounds but, fortunately, we managed to knock on the front door of our Irish friends and to park our car on their drive. From here, we managed to get into the park via a side entrance, only to find the park full of fun-fair rides, fast food stalls, temporary toilets everywhere and all of the other things that accompany a carnival. We managed to get to our usual bench and were soon joined by Seasoned World Traveller who came and spent a few minutes with us. We exchanged messages of support to each other to keep ourselves safe for the next few days and we may not even venture out of the house. On our way out of the park, we witnessed the carnival ‘floats’ going past on a series of large low loaders and flat bed trucks and there seemed to be lots of young people dancing away and enjoying themselves as the floats moved at a snail’s pace up the road. We got back to our car through people thronging the main road to witness the carnival parade and then made a circuitous journey back to our house, as some of the more immediate ways home were closed or blocked off to allow for the carnival parade. When we got home, we made a quick lunch of quiche and some salad type things which were quick and easy to prepare. This was just as well because it was going to be the ‘Bite Sized Classics‘ concert in our local church. We set off at 2.30 in order to get to the concert in plenty of time for a 3.00pm start and sat in our usual pew. The concert was provided by a prodigiously talented local musician who was accompanied on a keyboard by her father. The repetoire contained some some stunning classical ways by Handel and by Mozart that we had not heard before as well as some film classics such as ‘Ladies in Lavander‘ and ‘Schindler’s List‘ which are probably familiar to everyone. The concert which was only an hour long but contained about 8-9 items was most enjoyable and, after that, many of us piled into the Parish Hall for some tea, biscuits and cake. At the end of the performance, people seemed to give freely and generously to the collecction plates soliciting donations that were destined eventually for the Ukraine.

When the ‘bun fest’ was over, some of us were in a dilemma because we had an hour to spare before our ‘normal’ Church service started on Saturday evening. We decided to stay behind and chat with one of my fellow Parochial Church Council committee members who know us anyway from chatting to us in the park. We did exchange a few ‘medical’ stories as we are both of the age when we have required surgery in the last few years but it was pleasant to get to know one of our fellow parishioners through a more extended chat than is possible when arriving or leaving church on a normal Saturday evening.

Last night, I received a very welcome voicemail from our Irish friends down the road. They had been trying to bump into us (and us into them) for some days now but we got an invitation to pop in for coffee at 11.00am this morning. This we did because we had got the accumulation of lots of bits of family and other news that we wished to relay to them. We glanced at the weather before we walked down this morning but I had already made a journey by car to pick up our copy of the Times and the sky seemed to have a few clouds to keep the temperature down a smidgeon so we pleased to walk down. On the way, we paused to have a chat with our Italian friend who was bobbling about in her front garden and we keep on promising ourselves that we must make time for a longer chat rather than just a chance meeting in the street. With our Irish friends, we had a wonderful selection of sandwiches and some cake and were persuaded, as we were not motoring back, to have some refreshing alcoholic beverages as well. One of the things we wanted to do was to see if we could set up something for our 55th wedding anniversary which is going to be in early September. Although we are now six weeks before the anticipated date, we are conscious of the fact that bookings are best made some time in advance. Our friends have their own favourite restaurant in which we can eat midday so without further ado, our friend made a note of our agreed date and is going to make a booking for the four of us whilst we still have plenty of time. There were some church related matters that we were pleased to chat over with other and then we caught up with bits and pieces about which we had wanted to chat for a long time. We spent a couple of very happy hours in the company of our friends and then walked slowly home. The sky was quite cloudy and it did not look as though rain was really threatening so it was a pleasant walk home. Having said that, the Met Office had today issues a red warning about the extreme heat which is going to hit us on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday where it is anticipated that the temperature may well exceed 40 degrees somewhere in the UK. So if Meg and I make any venture out in the days ahead, we will take every precaution because red warnings from the Met Office are very rare and are presumably meant to be taken very seriously. When Meg and I got home, we cookd ourselves a couple of fillets of seabass served on a bed of lettuce – this meal has the advantage of being nutritious,non-fattening but exceptionally quick to prepare.

Once we had had our post-prandial rest, I texted my sister in Yorkshire and some friends who now live in Scarborough. I am trying to arange a window of time in which I can take my sister out for a celebratory meal of some sort as she will be 80 years old this year. In the same visit up to Yorkshire, we are hoping that we can coincide with our friends living in Scarborough and the plan, if it comes off, is to each take the train to York and then find a restaurant for a long midday meal and catchup. We are planning this for some time in late August and are hoping that the really good deal which we got on the hotel in central Harrogate we can manage to repeat on the dates that we want. This evening is going to be the opening night of The Proms and there is a going to be a performance of Verdi’s Requiem to open this season’s concerts. When I worked down in London in the mid-1960’s, I quite often went to concerts in the Royal Albert Hall. This is because they often sold tickets at some heavily discounted prices which even as an inpecunious civil servant could afford. I cannot quite remember how I got the tickets now but I think that an allocation went to the London Hostels Association which was a non profit making body which provided accommodation to young civil servants, as otherwise they could not afford to take up a position in London. We did lots of things that were cheap and cost no money such as organising a series of quizzes across the various hostels. Eventually, I became very friendly with the Sports and Social organiser for the LHA and helped him to put together the little booklet which we produced once per month and sold to the hostel residents. This is when I think I acquired a sort of taste for journalism which has stayed with me (for better or worse) throughout life.

Thursday is the day when I do my weekly shopping and today was a ‘heavy’ week as last week’s proved to be quite a light one and these things balance out. I was first in the queue to get into the supermarket and shopping is quite a stress-free experience this early in the morning. On my way home, I collected our newspaper and then it was off to home for a tiny breakfast (a poached egg on a rice cracker, following the slogan coined, I think, by Salmin Rushdie to ‘go to work on an egg’) Then it was a case of getting all of the washing hung out on the line as it was such an excellent drying day, fed Miggles the cat and finally prepared our elevenses for our trip to the park. We went into town by car this morning as time was marching on and we were delighted to have a conversation with Intrepid Octogenerian Hiker who we see practically every day that we go to the park and who is always busy completing his 9-10 kilometres for the day. We then made contact with our our recently established Lickey friends who follow this blog and told me things about myself I had long forgotten. We had some interesting discussions about the ways in which, when we teach ourselves languages, it is quite possible to make terrible mistakes. There are what linguists call ‘false friends’ where you are pretty sure you know the meaning of a word but it can land you in some trouble. The best example of this genre that I know of is the Spanish adjective ’embarasada’ which sounds to English ears to mean ’embarrassed’ but actually means ‘pregnant’ so you can see how this is likely to end up wih gales of laughter. So we had a pleasant chat and no doubt there will be many more in the days ahead. After we lunched (and dozed for a litle) I got onto BT to see if there was any news about the four phones and the router that we have on order with them and that we need if we are going to get our landline and fibre-based broadband up and running next Monday. Time is rapidly running out for these items of equipment to arrive so having got through to the relevant department within BT, I found out that the required kit had been despatched today by BT and was now in the hands of Royal Mail itself and I was informed that the gear should arrive with me on Saturday. This sounds like ‘just in time’ with a vengeance but I suppose there is always Monday morning but things might be a little frantic by then.

The results of the second round of voting for the Conservative party leader were announced at 3.00pm. As widely predicted, the Attorney General Suella Braverman who had only just crept into the the current round actually lost votes and was then eliminated. Now the total list is down to five and this has to be whittled down to two. Of course, when candidates are eliminated, there is a frantic lobbying to try to secure their erstwhile supporters for the next round. Sometimes, this is easy to predict as the ‘wings’ of the party tend to be very loyal to each other – but not always. So the 28 or so Braverman voters will almost certainly go to the most convinced of the remaining right winger/Brexit inclined candidates which in the current context means Liz Truss (and this is what happened) But this is where the politics gets really Machiavellian because if it can be demonstrated that you spotted the eventual winner at an earlier stage and publically pledged your support, then there is always the prospect that you will be rewarded with a Cabinet position. This sometimes means that MPs such as Gavin Williamson, one of the least competent Ministers of Education in the modern era, owe their appointment to the fact that they led the campaigns for the winning candidate. So this is politics – promises are made and then not redeemed, a certain amount of black propaganda and ‘dirt’ is hurled backwards and forwards. There are some stories that some of the candidates have been leaking ‘unsavoury’ details of other candidates that might be damaging to them to the Labour Party so that the ammunition is fired by the official opposition rather than one’s own side. It brings to mind the oft repeated aphorism in politics, with particular reference to the House of Commons that one’s opponents are to the front of you (i.e. the opposition) but one’s enemies are behind you)i.e. members of your own party). Although Rishi Sunak is the candidate in the lead as of this evening and Penny Mordaunt is not too far behind, getting into the last two is not the end of the game. It seems that Penny Mordaunt is much more popular with the Tory rank and file in the constituency parties out in the country so that it could be that even if Sunak + Mordaunt come out as the two preferred candidates of the parliamentary party, the real election may well depend upon the wider votes of Tory members in the constituencies so Mordaunt may well romp ahead and win the entire contest.

Today was a day when Meg and I were going to treat ourselves to a day out and we had chosen to spend the day in Stratford. Our domestic help had helpfully given us the postcode for a central car park in Stratford and having collected our newspaper and then filled up with petrol, we made our way there with no difficulty. When we were navigating Stratford today, although we had visited it previously, it seemed both enormous and teeming with tourists. The car park was attached to a huge leisure centre and it was not immediately evident to us whether to navigate to the north, south, east or west out of the car park. Fortunately, we seemed to head off in the right direction and we walked in the vague direction of the river. We found ourselves in an Italian type coffee bar and here we had some elevenses and enjoyed an indifferent cup of coffee and an equally indifferent pastry. But then we got into conversation with the couple on the next table and enjoyed an exceptionally stimulating half hour of chat. We started out with politics (trying to discern who might be forced out of the Tory leadership campaign in today’s vote when the results will be announced at 5.00pm this evening). We then chatted over a whole range of issues as our chatty ‘coffee neigbour’ was a business studies graduate so we had quite a lot in common swopping some of our industrial experiences and a few stories and jokes from our collective memory. Eventually we parted having exchanged business cards and as it was 1.00pm by this time, Meg and I went in search of a suitable place to lunch and found a Cafe Rouge which is rather a conservative choice of place in which to lunch but we did not feel like trailing about too much. We had a middling type of meal after which we were quite happy just to retrace our steps and return home.

The really big political news this afternoon was the result of the first round of voting for Conservative MPs to choose their own leader. Of the eight remaining candidates it is perhaps interesting to note that that the candidates split equally male and female (4 apiece) and are equally split in terms of ethnicity (again, four ‘white’ and 4 BAME candidates) But this round is going to be particularly interesting because after all of the protestations of support, this is the first time that in a secret ballot it may become apparent who has real support from fellow MPs and who does not. In some ways, it reminds me of the ways in which the Pope is elected from amongst the cardinals in the Catholic Church as some candidates evidently gain ground through the rounds of voting and some fall back. At 5.00pm the results were announced and the eight candidates were now reduced to six as Jeremy Hunt failed to reach the required threshhold of 30 votes as did Nadhim Zahawi. Personally, I was surprised to see that Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, just crept over the line into the next round and even the Times was saying today that nobody thinks that she will come close to success. But the real ‘dark horse’ of this round of voting was Penny Mordant who was a former defence Secretary, sacked by Boris Johnson (perhaps on the grounds that she was a bit too competent to be in his cabinet and might have stood up to him). For reasons that are not entirely clear, she has become the darling of the members of the Tory party out in the constituencies, replacing Liz Truss who used to hold the No. 1 spot. In today’s round of voting, Rishi Sunak retains the pole position but Penny Mordant had established a real momentum, rapidly improving the numbers of committed supporters and endorsements and taking the number 2 slot quite convincingly. There will be hustings tomorrow morning and then a further round of voting tomorrow afternoon but I do not think it has yet been announced what the threshhold of successful votes will be – this is in the hands of the 1922 committee who decide it round by round.Penny Mordaunt has kept a fairly low profile hitherto. Her promotional vide may have seemed rather ‘naff’ to the media professionals and started off badly by showing Johnny Peacock, the paralympic champion, winning one of his contests but the video clip was not included with his pernission and he insisted that he be removed from it in case it might appear that there was a degree of endorsement. The rest of the video was full of Churchillian rhetoric and rousing patriotic music reflecting Penny Mordant’s close military associations and this probably appealed to the ‘blue rinse’ brigade back in the ranks of the Tory party faithful. But I suspect that her real appeal is that she was not part of the Johnson cabinet and could therefore distance herself from the current administration all of whom were complicit in the Johnson lies and often defended them in public. Tomorrow’s results will again prove interesting.

Today, fortunately, was just a little bit cloudier than yesterday and consequently the heat was just a little bit easier to bear. But today being a Tuesday we go down to Waitrose and meet with our usual crowd of people – well, some of them anyway. As usual, we had a jolly good time and also took the opportunity to buying a few things of which we were short. Then we made our way home and I got prepared for my normal Pilates class later on in the morning. This was rather a strange class as there was only myself and one of the faithful regulars who has been attending the class for years now.

A few weeks go, I was ‘volunteered’ onto the Parochial Church council of the church I attend together with Meg on a weekly basis. We have had one meeting already but this was largely procedural concerned with getting some of our number into the leadership roles, followed by a lengthy discussion of how we were going to go about our task. Our church has had a Parochial Church Council at some time in the dim and distant past but COVID and changing philosophies about the role of the laiety makes for a new situation so we are almost starting ‘ab initio’. But tonight was our first real business meeting and the discussions ranged from the procedural (how do we make our own Council more representative of the congregation in terms of gender, ethnicity and age distribution), to the chatechismic (how do we best prepare our young church members for Confirmation) to the severely practical (does the availabillity of hand sanister in the porch of the church have deleterious effects upon door handles and the wooden furniture within the church). There was no animosities or ‘grandstanding’ involved but a genuine desire to see how we could individually and collectively fulfil our mission and play our part in the community of Bromsgrove. Once we settle down, we will meet about once every two months but one source of discussion was how we could ensure that the whole of our parish community could be better informed about the different voluntary activities that are already being undertaken. Incidentally, next Saturday we are going to have a concert of ‘bite sized’ classics performed in our Church as part of the Bromsgrove festival so it will be rather strange for Meg and myself to turn up, as we will, not for liturgical but for essentially entertainment purposes. The concert next Saturday is ‘free’ but nonetheless a collection plate will be passed around with contributions invited to help the people of Ukraine.

Today has been the day when the nominations for leadership of the Tory party had to be submitted. The number initially indicating that they intended to put themselves forward numbered 11 but this figure is already reduced to 8. One ‘no hoper’ failed to get any nominations whilst another two withdrew as they suspected that they would not meet the criteria of having their nomination papers supported by at least 20 MPs. One of the candidates who withdrew was our own MP, Sajiv Javid, who I suspect withdrew because he was in danger of falling short of the required number. What is particularly ironic in this case is that it was Sajiv Javid’s resignation which helped to start the gradual abandonment of Boris Johnson by the rest of his party. But Javid made the issue of integrity and honesty the main thrust of his complaint against Boris Johnson but in the event it appears that this does not cut much ice with his fellow Tory MPs. There is a saying, of course, probably drawn from Shakespeare that ‘he who wields the dagger never wears the crown‘ which explains why in any revolt against established leaders those who seek to depose them are very anxious not to be the ones discerned as striking the first blow. Now that the total number of candidates hs been reduced to eight, then voting will start tomorrow and the outcome is bound to be bloody in the extreme. One of the criteria that governs the voting tomorrow is that anyone failing to achieve 30% of the vote will be eliminated so it is possible that two more candidates may be gone by tomorrow night. Then there will be further votes on Thursday and more next Monday with the aim of cgetting the candidate list down to two as soon as possible. All kinds of machinations are now taking place – it has been said the the Tory party electorate is the most duplicitious in the world. Rishi Sunak appears to be the front runner but there is a determined ‘stop Risihi’ campaign from Johnson acolytes swinging votes behind Liz Truss. In the meanwhile, Penny Mordant an ex-defence minister who Boris has sacked in the past, seems to be very popular with members of the Tory party in the country so the results of the first round of voting, to be announced at about 5.00pm tomorrow afternoon, will be fascinating.

The heatwave continues today and there are warnings across the country that people should take the necessary steps to protect themselves. I think it is fair to say that Meg and I have not been unduly stressed by the heat so far but we are aware that as one ages, the body’s ability to cope with extreme heat diminishes. So we are taking the necessary steps to protect ourselves by not exposing ourelves to too much sun and keeping ourselves hydrated during the day. So we decided to take the car to collect our daily newspaper and then went off to the park by car. Having parked the car, we made for our usual set of benches but deliberately chose a seat that was in the shade rather than being in the full blast of the midday sun. We drank our coffee and ate our pieces of fruit and then made for home relatively early. We cooked ourselves our midday meal a little early because we knew that our chiropodist was due to pay us a visit in the early afternoon. Just after she had left and we had organised her fee payment over the internet we experienced a power cut. This only lasted for five minutes or so but there are always some appliances that need resetting after a power cut such as our bedside radio so this is one job for later.

Today is going to be quite an important day politically as the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs will choose a new executive committee today and will then determine the timetable for the election of a new party leader. The number of declared candidates stands at 11 at the moment and if Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, decides to stand then this will make 12. However, it seems to be a racing certainty that the 1922 committee will increase the number of MPs who have to sign the nomination papers for a candidate. At the moment, I believe this is 8 but it will probably be increased substantially to at least 20 and perhaps as many as 30. This will have the effect of cutting the number of candidates at a stroke as many will fail to attract enough signatures to stand. We expect the conditions for the election of a new leader to be announced some this evening but in any case, the Tory High Command, if I can put it that way, are determined to reduce the number of candidates to just two before parliament adjourns in about 10 days time. If one candidate does not withdraw (as happened when Andrea Leadsom withdrew from challenging Theresa May as she was so far behind) then the two candidates will be put forward to the Tory Party in the country and their votes will determine the outcome. There is a slight possibility that this last step might be truncated in view of the very special circumstances this time around and the fact that Boris Johnson is still the Prime Minister despite the wishes of most of the parliamentary Conservative party) but we shall have to wait and see. In any case, I am not sure that issues like this should be determined by members of the political parties in the wider country as this gave us Corbyn (on the left) and Johnson (on the right) and has the effect of pulling the parliamentary parties towards the extremes of left or right.

As we have mentioned in previous blogs, the issue of tax is tearing the Tory party apart at the moment. Most of the candidates (practically all of whom are from the right of the party) are in favour of tax reductions or reversing the rise in tax and NI contributions that the Johnson government had put in place to fund, inter alia, the costs of social care which is not a trivial problem. One the one hand, many older (and Conservative) voters are having to fund the entire cost of social care themselves by selling their houses and the arguments as to who will fund the social care costs of individuals who are ‘bed blocking’ within the NHS still needs to be resolved. If we have another wave of the COVID virus and already it is the case that hospital admissions are increasing, then in the autumn all of these pressure will become acute again. At the height of the pandemic, the care home owners were asked by the government to increase the supply of places available in the system to ensure that the acute wards could be cleared to make space for the wave of COVID cases. The government agreed some special payments to the bosses of the care home systems (dominated by a few large off-shore firms) who promptly took the money, paid themselves a massive bonus and most of the money disappeared into off shore tax havens and was not spent, as it should have been, on making that the care homes could hire enough staff and equip them with PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) upon which the lives of the caring staff may well depend.

As is customary on a Sunday, I got up early and treated myself to a little bowl of cereal before I collected our ration of Sunday newspapers. On my way down into town, I was greeted by a couple of our Catholic friends with whom I had not coincided for some time and I said that I would catch up with them both later, which we did. On my way down into town, I treated myself to a ration of Mozart on my trusty old iPhone and then got home to watch the Sunday morning politics programme with Sophie Raworth. Much of the programme was devoted to some of the election campaigns of the ‘runners and riders’ in the Tory race to replace Boris Johnson as leader of the party. We are currently at about 10 declared MPs and there may be one or two more than declare tomorrow. The issue that is emerging so far is absolutely nothing to do with Brexit, incomplete as it is at the moment. The big campaign theme which many of the would be hopefuls have seized upon is their desire to ‘cut taxes’. There are two problems with this particular approach. From a purely economist’s viewpoint, cutting taxes and thereby giving people more money to spend when inflation is running at 10%-11% is likely to add another twist to the inflationary spiral. But of much more significance is the fact that none of the contenders are saying what they would cut from public spending in order to fund the tax cuts. If one were completely cynical, it could be argued that cutting taxes is just a way of funnelling money towards the already rich and particularly Tory party donors. There is a particular irony in that two of the candidates were ex-Health ministers – in that role, they wanted as much public money as they could get for the Healh Service whilst simultaneously arguing for a lower tax burden overall. But what goes down well with Tory MPs and even Conservative party members in the wider society may well be at a sharp variance with the public as a whole. Some of the MSM (Main Street Media) have seized on this idea but there is quite a sharp divide between those who run their own businesses (and who would welcome a tax cut) and those employed in the public sector (for whom a tax cut may well be a reduction in services and in public sector jobs). When Meg and I walked down to the park this morning, we bumped into our Catholic friends again as they were out gardening and sympathised with our female friend who had broken her arm (or rather cracked a bone at the end of the radius/ulna) and was going to have to keep her arm in a sling for the next three weeks. Nowadays, they do not seem to plaster or even bandage a crack in an arkward place like this but A&E have given our friend a sling which is going to be her constant compannion for the next three weeks.

This afternoon was the Wimbledon Mens final and although I was reading the Sunday newspapers, I started to watch the final stages as it became exciting. In a tense match, Djokovic finally overcame Kyrgios although there were a few outbursts on the way. When the match was over, the two finalists appeared to be on quite good terms with each and, of course, they are likely to meet up in championships all over the globe. When the match was well and truly over, I decided to go and give some plants in Mog’s Den (a strip of land to which one to descend where I indulge myself with growing this and that) a good soaking in water.This is because some of the plants are in tubs which therefore need a watering and the rest are on a slope where it is slightly more difficult for some of the trees I have planted to establish really deep roots.But I was encouraged to see that some that some of the tree roots are in quite a deep shade which will help to preserve moisture in these very hot conditions. I have not done any maintenance gardening in Mog’s Den for a few weeks now but I was quite pleased to see that after a period of benign neglect, some of the plants I planted last year are really coming on. For example, I purchased a ‘tri-coloured’ buddleja which does not seem to have flowered yet but has shot up to about 8′ in height. There are some large brambles that will have to be removed but some other plants seem to be establishing themselves, not least a little oak tree which is itself grown from an acorn from a little oak tree that I brought up to Bromsgrove from our house in Hampshire.

Today dawned as another beautiful fine day so we are, no doubt, going to enjoy a heatwave over the next few days. We did not hurry ourselves this morning but instead breakfasted on an egg and some beet juice which is our new formula for a healthy and sustaining breakfast. When we had got ourselves turned around, we went by car to collect the Saturday newspaper and then on to the park to have our elevenses. We were soon joined by Seasoned World Traveller and we continued our discussions as to the next way ahead in the Conservative party elections for leader. What is interesting about these occasions is the way in which former allies turn on each other with a vengeance. A case in point is Rishi Sunak who was quickly out of the blocks wih an extremely slick, some would say too slick, campaign video which showed evidence of some serious professional attention, not to say money behind it all. No. 10 have started attacking the candidature of Rishi Sunak – surely, it ought to be the role of No. 10 to keep their heads down and not interfere with the normal processes of the election of a successor.

As we had had a fairly early lunch, this gave me some time to get the lawns cut this afternoon. By the time I had nearly finished the big grassed area, my next door neighbour came out to have a chat. Like us, he had been having some problems getting his broadband supply sorted out. In his case, he had been struggling for hours with his supplier who was now trying to charge him an outragous price now that his initial ‘sweetener’ deal had expired. Apparently, he had been on the phone for hours trying to secure a deal which meant he did not have to change supplier and gave him more or less the servive he was getting at the moment and at a similar price. We commiserated with each other as we still have to wait a week until our own comms problems start to be sorted out and who knows what a week on Monday might bring. After that, we discussed with a certain amount of glee what had been happening with Boris Johnson having to relinquish leadership of the Tory party. Occasionally, Meg and I listen to the programme on Radio 4 called ‘Any Questions’ where members of the audience ask questions of a panel broadly representing the range of political opinion. But in today’s broadcast, the Conservative member of the panel was Rees-Mogg who was defending Boris Johnson to the hilt although the other three members were critical of him (incidentally, this probably reflects the state of opinion in the country as a whole) But the audience from Dorset completely howled down Rees-Mogg which I am sure he was not expecting from that part of the world. The BBC normally tries to get ‘balanced’ audiences and it is possible that the Liberal Democrats had managed to smuggle of lot of their own supporters into the programme. But I suspect that echelons of the Tory Party have no idea how much they are loathed in much of the country as, until recently, members of the cabinet had supported a regime of lies, lies, and lies again. Eventually, as we now know, members of the cabinet who had been briefed to go onto the airways and lie on Johnson’s behalf revolted and the rest, as they say, is history.

Next week, a concert of popular classics is going to be put on in our regular church. So instead of attending for a service ay 6.00pm we shall turn up for a concert at 3.00pm after which there will be a bunfight in the church hall and then the normal Saturday service will start at 6.00pm. Meg and I will be well prepared, having gone to a concert recently in the Bromsgrove’s largest Anglican church, so we know to take along cushions to provide a softer surface than the normal church bench on which we will be sitting for hours. I am looking forward to the coming week because having had Wimbledon dominating BBc1 and BBC2 for hours and hours most nights, I will be glad to see the back of it. In its place, we should get the Proms (Promenade Concerts) broadcast on BBC4 and BBC2 from about Friday night onwards. The Proms always puts on some newish or experimental work and I haven’t seen any advance information on this year’s offerings but we shall soon see. We haven’t coincided with our Irish friends for quite some time what with one thing or another so we may drop by and wave from outside the house to let them know that we are still alive! As always, we are looking forward to the kinds of analysis of political events provided by the Sunday Times as we are likely to get a blow-by-blow account of what eventually persuaded Boris Johnson after all of his bluster that the game was up.

The day dawned bright and beautiful with a weather forecast that seemed to presage temperatures in the 80’s (I always remember that 28 degrees C is equal to 82 degrees F) I went down early to collect the newspapers today before Meg and I walked down to the park to enjoy the summer sunshine. Having drunk our coffee, we were joined by our University of Birmingham friend and then shortly afterwards by Seasoned World Traveller. Needless to say, the demise of Boris Johnson and all of the unfolding political events was a massive topic of interest to us. A point emerged in our discussions which is also reinforced by the editorial in todays Times. The point is that both political parties have in the past few years refined their leader selection procedures such that whichever candidates emerge, the final decision is left to the members of the respective political parties. Now it is a truism of the political scene in the UK that the constituency parties are well to the left of the Labour Party (in the case of Labour) and well to the right of the parliamentary party in the case of the Conservatives. So this has given rise to Corbyn and Corbynism in the case of Labour and, of course, Boris Johnson in the case of the Tories. In other words, the leadership and tenour of our political parties are being dragged towards the extremes and one has to wonder whether this is a good thing or not. One solution might be to confine the leadership canidates and campaigns solely to the partrliamentary parties but with the proviso that legitimacy should be subsequently sought by a general election to be held within a year (in the case of a governing party, which is nearly always the Conservatives) When trying to think this through, I suspect that a government which is moderate right or moderate left is likely to be more effective in effecting change for the nation and ‘good governance’ than an incredibly mish-mash of pure centrism. To reinforce this view, I read fairly recently that it is quite possible that in the American context, a Republican voter might not know a single Democrat voter in the whole of their social contacts and vice versa. Hence the situation in which 70% of Republicans do tend to believe that Trump actually won the last election (only getting their news from social media). One would hope that the British political system would try to avoid rather than imitate these American trends and we could therefore take some steps to avoid our political parties being taken over by the rabidly committed (Brexiteers, populists, hard left). All of this, of course, in the context of the current leadership context in the Tory party and is it a good thing that the normal procedures for electing a new leader may mean that the discredited Johnson stays in power until September, two months after a sound rejection by his own cabinet and his own party?

Meg and I came home and had a good meal of fried salmon on a bed of lettuce which is our ‘norm’ for a Friday. We really enjoyed though reading the acres of newsprint that were devoted to a blow-by-account of how Boris Johnson’s grip on power was gradually loosened and, of course, a lot of deep analysis about the personal flaws (i.e. extreme Narcisism) that has characterised the Johnson regime since its inception. After all, Boris Johnson’s housemaster wrote to his father words to the effect that ‘Boris does not seem to believe that he should be be bound by the rules and social obligations that apply to the rest of us‘ and nothing seems to have changed over the subsequent years.

Over the next few weeks, we are planning one day out a week to a neighbouring town and next week we thought we make for Stratford. As we are going to run into a heatwave, though, we are going to avoid the town centre altogether and then just make for a good stroll down by the river. We have been directed to a particularly good car park with the river on one side and some good restaurants on the other so we are going to make for that. The last time we went to Stratford with some friends, I remember that we were incredibly impressed by a group of strolling players who, when given a suitable quotation from Shakespeare, could immediately launch into a soliloqy from whatever play it happened to be. I suppose they had all played many parts over and over again but I found their powers of recall to be absolutely amazing. Stratford at this time of year, just before the school holidays start and before masses of foreign tourists descend upon it is probably delightful but I have bad memories of visiting the town in August with our Spanish friends when the town was teeming and all of the retaurants and bars appeared to be full. But I am sure things will be better than that when we go next week, all being well.

It seemed inevitable like a Greek drama that today was going to be a day of great political drama and so it proved. As the number of junior ministerial resignations started to mount and reach a figure of about 35, it was evident that on the mathematics alone, there was no way that Boris Johnson could survive another leadership contest. At about 10.00pm last night, the news came through that Michael Gove, the ‘Levelling Up’ minister and a cabinet big-hitter had been sacked over the phone. The animosity between Johnson and Gove goes back over the years but this was perceived to be an act of sheer vindictiveness and did not go down at all well with Conservative MPs. As soon as my radio switched on at 6.30am, the junior ministerial resignations continued to rise and some more cabinet ministers had also withdrawn their support. It must have been evident to practically everybody, apart from the PM himself that he was doomed. I wonder, though, what was the influence of Carrie Johnson, Boris Johnson’s wife? Those who follow politics closely will know that it was Denis Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher’s husband who sat down on a sofa and gave a glass of whisky to his wife and said ‘Come on, Maggie – you must know the game is up’ Why the story is interesting is because Denis Thatcher liked to cultivate the image of a rather bumbling, gin-soaked, golf-club bore – hence the columns in ‘Private Eye’ under the title of ‘Dear Bill’. But actually, Denis Thatcher was no fool and had quite a sharp political brain. So I am speculating whether it is political spouses who give the final push at the tipping point. I think the news came through just after 9.00am that Boris Johnson had decided to bow to the inevitable and to resign as leader of the Conservative party whilst remaining as Prime Minister until a new leader is in place. However, this itself is massively problematic. One the one hand, we have to have some sort of more or less stable government in place so that crucial decisions can take place – not least because of the cost of living crisis and soaring inflation levels. On the other hand, the opposition parties and many in the Tory party feel that a discredited Prime Minister who has lost the confidence of his cabinet and parliamentary party does not deserve to be in office for a moment longer than is necessary. The solution may lie in the hands of the 1922 Committee of back bench Tory MPs who may decide early next week to rapidly accelerate the procedures for selecting a new leader so that the ‘runners and riders’ (of which there are many) can be reduced to the two front runners as soon as possible. When the field has been whittled down to two, the decision is then put to Conservative party members in the country and this is how the final decision is made. At this stage, though, there is likely to be one candidate who is a clear front runner as was the case in the run off between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt at the time of the last contest.

My son and I had an appointment with a financial advisor this morning, which was necessary to tidy up some details on a mortgage on my son’s property. The meeting proved to be very satisfactory and has the advantage that the location of the firm of financial advisors is easily accessible for us as well as having a very good reputation. Whilst we were there, the news of Boris Johnson’s resignation came through on our mobiles so when I returned home, I followed the breaking news on the news media and, in particular, the resignation speech which came a tad after 12.30. To my mind, this was quite an extraordinary speech with Johnson seeming to blame everyone but himself and with not a hint of contrition about it. In one memorable phrase, he indicated that ‘when the herd instinct takes over, the herd moves off’ which if you were to decode it is very insulting to the rest of the parliamentary party. The social historian Anthony Selsdon was interviewed and opined that Johnson would come to rue the day when, as the history books are written, it has become evident that Johnson has no capacity for self-reflection or indication that he may have made mistakes or even crass errors of judgement. Meg and I decided to treat ourselves to a Waitrose coffee but once we were safely parked in the carpark, we were approached for a soundbite by a reporter from BBC Hereford and Worcester for a soundbite about the Johnson resignation. On the spur of the moment, I mentioned my delight at Johnson’s resignation, and when pressed for reasons mentioned his constant lies, his desregard for any of the constitutional proprietaries and the total disregard for any norms of ethical conduct. The reporter mentioned to us that our little soundbite might be broadcast between 4.10-4.20 and although we are not regular listeners to Radio Hereford and Worcester, our soundbite was included as part of a collage of responses from members of the public in Bromsgrove. After lunch, Meg and I were glued to the TV to watch the sequelae of the Johnson resignation as the various manifesttions and reactions were gathered from interviews in Downing Street and in the lobby of the House of Commons.