What an interesting day it has proved to be today. Meg and I were somewhat late this morning and we would not have been surprised if our little newspaper shop had run out of our regular newspapers. But the Gods must have looked kindly upon us for we got the last copy of The Times and the second last copy of The Guardian. Although the road traffic seemed relatively quiet this morning (lockdown finally having an effect?) the park seemed to be as busy as usual with young mothers, toddler children and dogs in every shape and variety. We met one of our regular friends who comes to the park as we do almost every day and we exchanged little bits of news with each other. When we got home, we had a light lunch of soup and settled down in front of the rolling news programmes as it was evident that the US elections were coming to some of climax.

Just before the inevitable announcement came, there was a bizarre announcement coming from the Trump camp that his lawyers were going to hold a kind of ‘press conference’ in an industrial estate and the rumours were rife that the lawyers might be able to produce  a witness to an election fraud that they were going to parade in front of the media. However, just before the scheduled time of 4.30 the BBC ‘called’ the election, perhaps slightly in advance of the rest of the media conglomerates. As you might imagine when the news broke that the Biden camp had received another tranche of votes that pushed his lead to 34,000 the dam broke. The world’s media went mad (with joy?) at the news of the Biden victory and there was massive of ‘vox pop’ with crowds in Washington, Philadelphia, New York and elsewhere. In the meanwhile, Donald Trump was filmed off playing golf in Virginia – news of the lawyers’ press conference absolutely disappeared off the media agenda. (For conspiracy theorists, is this why the BBC ‘called’ the result in Philadelphia some five minutes before the lawyers’ press conference?)

In the meanwhile, a little bit of background (courtesy of Associated Press) to explain why the result was called when it was. The election officials knew that were only 60,000 left to process and to overcome this the Trump vote would have to have been about 75% of this. As all the postal vote had actually been 75% in favour of the Democrats and the election officials knew that the remaining vote was from very Democrat inclined areas (urban Philadelphia) then it would have been unlikely in the extreme (although not impossible) that Trump could garner these votes. The election officials waited until the gap between the candidates was 0.51% at which point an automatic recount could not be called (as it has to be 0.5% gap or smaller) and then gave ‘the nod’ to the media. I think this is the most likely explanation but election nerds might have to consult the finer print of the quality newspapers.

The political implications of all of this are tremendous. It could well be that Joe Biden serves one term (he will be 78 at the time of the inauguration) at which point Kerala Harris (now the Vice President elect, who incidentally is the first woman and person of colour to successfully occupy the office of VP) will win the next Presidential election and if she has two terms, the the Democrats will have the presidency for the next twelve years. President-elect Biden has been sounding extremely Presidential and is making all of the right noises about ‘healing the nation’ whereas the Trump team are still breathing fire and brimstone and threatening all kinds of appeal to the Supreme Court next Monday (which they may not actually carry out) Amidst the welter of other media interviews there was one that stood out in my memory as he opined ‘if the Democrats were so corrupt and intent on cheating, why did they not do it four years when Trump was elected and it wouldn’t have taken many ‘frauds’ to deny him?’ The other point to make is the absurdity of the Republican position who are almost uniformly crying ‘foul’ but some of them are saying ‘Stop the Count” (in states in which were Biden was ahead) but other Republican crowds were shouting ‘Count the Votes‘ (in states in which Trump was ahead). Just an interesting afterthought to all. of this – who will be the brave Republican who is delegated to go into the room and say to  President Trump ‘The game’s up – you have lost!’

A final statistic – the participation rate in this election has been the greatest since 1900 and 75 million voters (more than any other candidate in history) voted for Biden. This equates to a lead in the popular vote of some 4% (which could be 5% when all of the final tallies have been completed). 

Well, today was the day that followed last night. I woke up in the middle of the night and wondered what was going in the US Presidential elections – as I thought that Pennsylvania must just get called (what a hope!) I stayed up for an hour watching a variety of things on Sky News (as my Mac decided to update its operating system in the middle of the night, just when I wanted to use it so this knocked out about three-quarters of an hour). In the course of yesterday evening’s viewing, I did see Donald Trump’s rant from the White House and I seriously wondered whether the rant that ensued was a sign of seriously disintegrating personality – or worse. However, worse is bound to follow in the next few days.

Today was the day in which we were scheduled to pick up our new car so we duly made our way there to arrive at 11.00 am. The transaction all had to be completed outdoors to comply with various regulations these days, so we were signing various handover documents on a variety of clipboards, handing over documentation and the like on our existing vehicle before getting a mountain of documents on the new one. All to be seemed to be handled extremely expeditiously so having rescued the car mats from our previous vehicle, we were on our way home. I must say I do not particularly like the first hour or so driving a new car until one is completely familiar with all of the controls and updates. But we made sure that we had the car radio tuned into Radio 4 and Classic FM which suits us 95% of the time and most of the remaining controls seemed to be a ‘carry-over’ from our previous Honda. There is one particular feature which I particularly like and no doubt I will discover lots of others as the days and weeks roll by. In most of the cars I have had, the petrol gauge tends to be circular in nature but in this car, it is a linear scale. But immediately above it is another linear scale which measures the current mpg and so you can tell for any particular gear or road conditions how your mpg is responding. I noted, for example, that reducing my speed from 70mph to 60mph seemed to push up my mpg substantially to about 45mpg, so it is quite easy to adjust your driving to meet your desired fuel consumption. I found this an excellent feature – just the little refinement which makes a new car a joy to explore. When I got home and after lunch, I fitted our old car mats on top of the supplied ones. There is a certain logic behind off of this. I like to have some light-ish car mats as a ‘top set’ as it were and in the doors compartment, I usually store a car wheel brush. Then if I have been anywhere particularly muddy or I have a few seconds to spare at the end of a journey, I can easily remove the light mat and give it a quick brush-over (keeping the under-mats pristine as well)

This afternoon was a particularly delicious afternoon. We were watching the Biden count in the remaining four contested states gradually overhaul that of Trump and eventually gradually increase as new batches of votes (by county?) are gradually added. Much of this pattern is both predictable and predicted – Donald Trump asked his supporters to vote in person on the day which they generally did, thus building up ‘red’ majorities. But then the Democratic vote started what is known as the ‘Blue Shift’ as the votes come in form the larger urban areas in which voters had voted by postal ballot or by drop off box. The Republican voters tended to think that COVID-19 was largely a Democrat myth and did not mind queuing up next to each to vote in person on election day. The Democrat voters did believe in COVID-19 and their vote tended to be counted after the ‘in-person’ vote had already been tabulated.

As I blog, the Democrat lead over Trump is gradually increasing (14.5k in Pennsylvania, 20k in Nevada, 39k in Arizona, only 4k in Georgia) There will certainly be a recount in Georgia as the totals are within 0.1%-0.2% of each other) and in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) there seems to be a lot of military (posted votes) still to be counted. There does seem to be a movement ‘in the air’ that it is really important that each particular vote is actually counted and recorded and this may be the enduring impact of the ‘Black Lives Matter‘ social movement. The Trump rant to the effect that the elections are fundamentally flawed and subject to massive fraud all over the USA is being quietly contradicted by various leading Republicans who are re-asserting their faith in the counting process. We might add that in many of the states, the officials in charge of the counts are registered Republican but the integrity of the officials has been systematically traduced by Trump. It may well take a day or so to get the final totals from all of the states but when the overall result is in no doubt (i.e. Biden has unequivocally won the election, pending court cases notwithstanding), then one can watch with some pleasure. More on this as the days unfold!

Well, today seems an ‘intermediate’ kind of day. This is because several things are due to happen tomorrow (USA election finally ‘called’ on favour of Biden or Trump) and we are due to pick up our new car tomorrow. So today, we contented ourselves with getting bits and pieces done before tomorrow. The weather was fairly fine but a little chilly today (in line with forecasts) and we enjoyed our walk, made more enjoyable by little chats on route. We met one of our oldest friends complete with child (grandchild, actually) who she had been taking to observe the ducks now that the grandchild is about 11 months old. We also ran into the very good neighbour of a friend of ours who has been having a bit of a traumatic time recently, having to undergo a series of tests (endoscopies) which didn’t work out as intended as well as some blood tests. We are hoping that the outcome of all of tis is not unfavourable but she only lost her husband about twelve months ago to liver cancer. Finally, on the way home we stopped to chat with a friendly guy who was trimming his hedges and seemed inclined to talk – it must be the fine weather that encourages people to smile and chat with neighbours. Actually, when I think about it, today was the first day of the ‘Lockdown Mark II‘ so you would have thought that there would been hardly any traffic on the roads and the streets would have been almost deserted. However, the traffic did not seem to have abated much and the number of people in the park about the same as aways (but then, of course, exercise is not only permitted but encouraged under the new regime).

Having got home and eaten an early lunch, I knew that I wanted to make a fairly early start in ‘prepping’ the car before we hand it in tomorrow in exchange for our new one. About a week ago, I had the car quite well valeted by one of a group of Kurds to whom we have been going for years and who operate from a carpark of a local pub (unused during the day!) This afternoon, I got myself into my car washing routine (which, as it happens, involved an assortment of watering cans used for the sole purpose of car washing) and buckets of detergent water. This bit went all right but I knew that when you hand over a car there are a variety of your own mats, boot impedimenta, CD’s, and other bits of documentation which are always kept in the car, such as the permit for the Municipal tip which has to be displayed before they let you in. The car is now in a fit condition to be handed over and we are are almost prepared for the handover tomorrow – I must remember to take along certain documents, handbooks, log books, spare keys etc. After all had been completed (whilst the daylight lasted) I popped over to see a neighbour because we wanted to check out some aspects of her house alarm system and it is always better to have two bodies (and heads) associated with this so that you do not inadvertently lock yourself out. As it happened, all was well so back into the house for tea.

I mentioned earlier that today was a kind of ‘waiting game’  in the US presidential elections. The system that seems to be deployed is that even though the count in a particular state is not complete, then a state is ‘called’ i.e. allocated to one candidate or the other if the gap between the candidates is greater than the number of ballots yet to be counted – even if all of the uncounted votes went to the losing candidate, then the gap is too great to be bridged. This is what you might call the ‘easy’ call of a state. But the American commentators seem to be deploying a much more sophisticated kind of calling that works that likes. Candidate A is 1.0% ahead (translated into votes) but you know that the remaining votes are coming from a county in which y% of people may have voted. If you know from historic voting patterns or other socio-demographic data that an uncounted county  will generate so may votes for one candidate or another, then it is possible to ‘almost’ predict what the final result will be. This sounds unduly abstract but a good case in point is Pennsylvania. About 88% of the vote has been counted and Trump is leading Biden by about 1.4% or 90,500 votes. But there is about 12% of the vote yet to be counted which is approx. 870,000. It looks as though the majority of the yet-to-be-counted vote will be Democrat which will be about 470,000 which is five times the deficit. Is it any wonder that the Republicans want the count to be stopped ‘immediately’ whilst they are ahead. We have the strange spectacle (to us) of crowds of Republican supporters where Trump appears to be ahead shouting ‘Stop the Count‘ whereas in the states where Trump appears to be behind they are chanting ‘Count the Vote‘ Tomorrow, we will see how all of this works out!

I must be a real masochist watching elections of any type because I never seem to witness the result I really want. I tuned into the election broadcasts at 11.30pm  last night knowing that some of the American polls would close at 12.00pm and thereafter we might get an exit poll or something. In practice, nothing seemed to happen for hours except that the predictable (i.e. states not expected to swing) announced first – the eastern seaboard states for Biden and the large empty, agricultural states in the centre of America for Trump. The first state of interest was going to be Florida in which the national polls had suggested that Biden had the narrowest of leads. In practice, it turned out that Florida was not going to turn away from Republican, and is Donald Trump’s adopted home state and the home to a sizeable population of Cuban heritage voters who are vehemently ‘anti-socialist’ and therefore responded to the message that a vote for the Democrats was a vote for ‘socialism’ (very much a ‘boo’ word in the US) Although political analysts talk about the Latino vote (or the Hispanic vote), in practice the ex-Cuban Americans have always been pretty right wing and do not vote in the same way as ‘latinos’ in other parts of the USA. So Florida stayed in the Trump camp and alter a little flurry of excitement in Texas, it too stayed in the Trump camp. I headed off for bed at 3.15 pretty dispirited and not convinced that the situation was rescuable for the Democrats as the later states were due to declare.

Meg and I walked down to the park on a beautiful Autumn day. Whilst there, we got into conversation with an elderly lady who hired a taxi at great expense to come to the park in Bromsgrove where she she said several ‘turns’ of the park to keep herself mobile. Having spent the first period of ‘lockdown’ confined to the house, she was determined to come to the park to exercise (and to chat) at least once a week if she could. It is quite inspirational when you see the efforts that some elderly people make (she was in her 80’s) to keep themselves connected with the rest of the world and mobile as well.

Upon our return home, we switched on the TV to see the latest election results.Donald Trump had assembled an audience in the ‘East’ room of the White House where he held a most extraordinary briefing. With a handle of ‘swing’ states under his belt, he declared that he was well on the way to victory, that he wanted ‘voting’ (by which he meant ‘ballot counting’) to cease in several other presidential races and he intended to apply to the Supreme Court to attempt to invalidate what he claimed was the election being ‘fraudulently’ stolen from him. We knew that Donald Trump was going to try this tactic but the audacity of it shocked the rest of the media. Then, there was just a glimmer of light for the Democrats. Eventually, they cornered the state of Arizona which was the first of the states held by Trump to ‘flip’ sides. Then it looked as though a neighbouring state of Nevada might be heading in the same direction., Finally, at about 8.00 in the evening, Wisconsin was ‘called’ for the Democrats which now puts Biden only 22 votes short in the electoral college (he needs 270 and is currently up to 248 votes so he needs 22 more) Where he to gain Nevada and Michigan, where he is about 0.5% ahead, then he will have secured the 270 votes needed even if does not get the big prize of Pennsylvania. The margin of 0.5% sounds incredibly small until you realise that the votes still to be counted are postal ballots and these are more likely to be Democrat rather than Republican and hence this 0.5% can only increase. As you might expect, the Republicans are already demanding a full recount in Wisconsin (they wouldn’t if they were ahead!) and law suits of every variety are flying thick and fast. I imagine that a lot of this will unwind some time tomorrow or even Friday – for some reason, they have stopped counting in Nevada but will carry on again tomorrow.

Needless to sat, my bottles of Newcastle Brown have remained unopened – and will do so until some more states have declared. I suspect that with lawyers’ writs, recounts, challenges and the like, this whole election might take several days before we get anything approaching a definitive result. It is said that in China, there is amusement that a society can tear itself apart having a really divisive election – why not just have one political party (the Communist party) to make decisions in a society?  However, wins the election, some commentators are already arguing that ‘Trumpism’ is now ‘baked in’ to the USA electorate and there will be a continuing culture wars for years ahead.

Well, election day in the US has finally arrived but of course, with the time difference of five hours between GMT and EST, the polls do not actually open until 7am at the earliest which is 12.0pm GMT. The news overnight is that some 100 million (actually 99.7 million) of US voters have actually already voted either by mail or by dropping off their voting papers in a ‘ballot box’ (which seem to have grown in popularity this election as a result of the COVID-19 crisis). There are already legal fights going on – first thing this morning, the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania was asked to overturn a ruling that any vote posted in time (according to the post mark) was a legal vote. The Republicans (naturally) suspecting that many of these mailed in votes would be Democrat was asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare these votes invalid – they failed in their attempt. I did see a clip on the MSNBC channel that the Attorney General of Pennsylvania was recorded as saying that the election authorities would stamp down hard on any illegitimate poll-observers engaging in voter intimidation (i.e. the Republicans giving the nod to some of their burley and well-armed quasi-militia to march up and down near the election venues to ensure ‘fair play’) He also announced that the election authorities would count every single ballot even if takes some days, thereby trying to forestall Donald Trump counting up the (predominantly) Republican votes that had been cast in person on Election Day itself and claiming that the election had been ‘won’ and trying to cast some doubt on the validity of all of the uncounted (and predominantly Democrat) votes. To UK eyes and the British sense of ‘fair play’ all of this seems absolutely extraordinary but ‘Hey! This is America! Land of the Free!‘ (i.e. free to intimidate, subvert and otherwise trick your way into an election victory.)

It was a most beautiful day today for Meg and I to walk down into town. We di not see any of our usual friends for a chat but we enjoyed a fine day where we could actually, at times, feel the heat of the sun on our faces. This was not too last – we ran into a little shower on the way home but it was more a really light drizzle rather than a full-scale rainstorm. We knew that we wanted to get home in reasonable time because as it was my Pilates Day (the last for until the end of the lock-down) I wanted to get most of the mid-day meal prepared so that it took just a quick microwaving when I returned just before 3.00pm. We had rather a doleful Pilates experience as we knew that whilst we could participate in some ‘Zoom’ classes organised by our teacher, we would not be meeting again as a group until the end of the lockdown – and we all suspected that the lockdown would ‘de facto’ last longer than the supposed four weeks. I suspect it will be extended by another two weeks and then we will run into a Christmas holiday period so we may not be ‘unlocked’ until January.

However, I did receive some good news in the late morning. I had a couple of telephone calls from the garage from which we hoped to collect our new car later on this week, Our salesman had some good news for us. The leasing company, perhaps armed with some more up-to-date advice from a government agency), had given us permission to pick up our new car next Friday, provided that all of the handover transactions take place outside the showrooms i.e. in the open air. I am sure we shall manage this OK – in the meantime, we are delighted that our original plans have not completely fallen foul of the new LockDown Mark II regulations.

I decided to have quick look at what Huff post (Huffington Post) were saying throughout the voting today. I was think it is fair to say that most of the commentary was apoplectic at the avowed intention of Donald Trump to ‘steal’ the election by force or by fraud. One comment  that I read was illuminating: “He’s been laying the groundwork for this for months,” said Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor and the lead lawyer for House Democrats during Trump’s impeachment over his extortion of Ukraine to help his reelection bid. “Mind-blowingly fascist.”I have noticed that many very serious minded and not particularly partisan commentators (not all of them Democrat by any means) have been observing that the whole of american democracy is on trial tonight and not just the election of a president. I think the feeling is that if you win an election by voter suppression, discounting or not even counting some valid votes, using militia to engage in voter intimidation, challenging at every point with an army of lawyers all the way through the various state legislatures, appeal courts and eventually Supreme Courts (even as far as the United States Supreme Court itself, packed with die-hard republican judges) then the whole American democratic ideal has been subverted.

I do not expect that I shall see anything like a definitive result tonight. But I hope at least that the tide of opinion is such that once we have Florida out of the way and some of the other faster-counting states that there might be an indication by about 3.00am which way the wind is blowing and I can crawl into my bed and get some well-earned sleep!

Today was the kind of day for which the word ‘blustery’ might have been invented. The weather was a little on the cool side and there seemed to be the threat of a shower but fortunately we missed out on that. On the other hand, a fairly keen wind was doing its November job of stripping leaves off the trees and depositing them on pavements – which both children and young dogs loved to romp through. We were a little later than we should have been because we had to make, and receive, a series of telephone calls in the morning. In theory, we should be picking up a new car on Friday but of course Lockdown Mark II has intervened. We originally arranged with the garage to pick up the new car two days early if we could, on Wednesday. However, our existing lease runs on until Thursday and for a reason I cannot really discern, it could not by replaced by a new one (but if it had run out out on Wednesday, all would have been have OK) Anyway, the garage is undertaking various enquiries as to exactly what business can be transacted at the start of the lockdown in a case such as ours but if the worst comes to the absolute worst, we shall have to wait until the end of the lockdown (whenever that is) to pick up the new car.

We got back home fairly late this morning and had the roast we would have had at the weekend if we had not gone out for a meal. Then we kept an eye open on the weather because we knew that one day this week, our lawns needed their final cut of the season. We were aware that other things were likely to mess up our afternoons a little this week (Pilates on Tuesday, election watching on Wednesday, possible car transactions on Thursday or Friday) so we decided to take the ‘bull by the horns’ and get the lawns cut this afternoon. So far, so good – the grass turned out to be quite thick so a last cut was certainly needed. However, the last cut of the season is a bit special, as I like to run the petrol down to completely empty to ensure that there is no residual petrol hanging around in the system. This means that although I deliberately put no extra petrol in the tank this afternoon, when the mowing was completed I was marching up and down my lawn, complete with mower shouting at it ‘Die! Die!‘ which it resolutely failed to do for about half an hour, by which time it was completely dark. I remember vaguely that in these once-a-year a year type of jobs, I really needed to start at 2.15 rather than 3.15.This is because the clocks went back last weekend, which meant that by the time that engine had ‘died’ it was completely dark.  I then had to empty the oil (not an easy task) by the light of the patio light and give the mower its end-of-season cleanup as I do not want to store it for months on end with layers of encrusted mud and grass under the mower hood. I managed to finish all of this little lot at 5.45 being a bit cold and tired and dying for a warming cup of tea! But at least, the job is now done until March 25th (my son’s birthday and the date at which I traditionally make the first cut of the new season)

Today is the last day of electioneering in the American presidential elections. Donald Trump  knows that approx two thirds of the electorate have already voted and perhaps a majority of these votes will be Democrat and therefore the people who vote ‘in person’ tomorrow will be predominantly Republican. So Trump is suggesting that all counting should finish ‘on the evening of the election’ (i.e. when a majority of the vote is likely to be Republican) when he will declare himself elected. He will then rely upon ‘an army of lawyers’ to attempt to invalidate the 50-60% of the uncounted vote (not to mention a variety of courts including the newly Republican-packed Supreme Court). This is so outrageous a suggestion that all of the Main Street media have said that if Trump does such a thing, they will all collectively refuse to report Trumps claim. By the way, didn’t Hitler come to power ‘democratically’ – I must check up on my history to see if there are any historical parallels?  I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a long night, unless of course, Florida goes to Biden quite quickly (unlikely, but not impossible) and some other states follow. Not long to go now – but I am not opening my first bottle of beer until the Democrats have won at least one or two of the swing states!

Today is evidently the 1st of the month but I resisted the temptation to utter my normal aphorism. As we woke up a little late, I went down in the car to pick up our normal supply of Sunday newspapers and just managed to get back in time to watch the Andrew Marr show from the start. Keir Starmer (Leader of the Labour Party) was interviewed and seemed to me to be very impressive in that he gave full support to the government lockdown but reminded the government that he had been calling for this lockdown together with the consensus of scientific opinion some two weeks earlier. He made the very interesting point that if the lockdown had been called a couple of weeks ago, then it could have coincided with the school’s half term which, combined with two weekends and one or two in-service training days, then you could have had the best part of two weeks with the children not in school. I must admit I had not fully appreciated that government scientists regard the level of infection amongst the older secondary school children as comparable with the wider population, but of course most of the school children will be asymptomatic. Nor had I realised that the SAGE committee had advised university students to be taught on-line and not to return to their colleges which, when the story of the pandemic comes to be told, will rank as another great mistake by the present government in not keeping the university students in their home communities.

We had an interesting chat with one of our oldest friends on the way down the hill and we exchanged news and views about the latest lockdown. To interpret at least one of the rules is going to be difficult. You are allowed to meet one person from outside your household bubble but in the case of our conversation this morning, would this have been legal? Meg and I were speaking to one person which is within the rules but out friend was speaking to two of us which is now forbidden by the rules. Given that a person on their own often meets a couple outside, then who is allowed to have a meeting and a chat with whom? This morning was a much pleasant day after the rain of yesterday for Meg and I to have a sojourn in the park where we were met by our Italian friend who was out for  a stroll in the pale sunshine. We walked back to her house together, exchange COVID lockdown observations and speculated  that for people like ourselves (enjoying the open air, meeting with acquaintances and friends) the new lockdown would not prove to be especially arduous but for some others who are housebound, then they must be regarding the next four weeks or so with a degree of trepidation. Finally, on nearing our own house we encountered some more near neighbours who we happen to know have both a dog and a cat who happily co-exist with each other, so we exchanged observations about how we were going to cope with the weeks ahead.

Being Sunday, we were happy to spend a lot of the rest of the day absorbing the contents of the Sunday newspapers. I was extremely impressed by a graphic design which I saw on the inside pages detailing how either Trump or Biden can chart their progress to wards the magic 270 votes in the Electoral College. The graphic showed for each candidate a line indicating the seats that they ought to have ‘in the bag’ i.e. a state which alway votes one way, plus a further component which ‘leans’ towards one candidate. In Biden’s case, the certain plus the probable would give him 233 votes – so he needs another 37 to get him over the finishing line. You then consult the graphic for the number of votes available in each of the swing states to work out what was needed. For example, if Biden were to gain Florida which declares early and would give him 29 votes than he would only need one more state to get him over the line. On the same logic, were he to carry the three northern ‘rust-belt’ states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, then he could afford to ‘lose’ Florida to Trump. So as you can see, this is going to be enormously useful to me in the wee small hours of Wednesday morning when I am following the progress of the elections. If Biden gains Florida early, I can go straight to bed – otherwise, it might be a nail-biting finish which extends or days (particularly Pennsylvania, for reasons best known too itself, is only going to start the counts of the postal votes the following day!) Of course, the more the postal vote, the longer the count might be – but it could also be that a very large vote hands victory to Biden sooner rather than later. We have just over two days left now to find out how this all works out!

Today was a pretty foul day with a lot of rain in the early part of the morning. As Meg and I had a lunch date in Bicester, we decided to play things a little differently this morning. To save a bit of time but also to get our bit of exercise in, we walked to the park (in the pouring rain) and then decided to go straight to the bandstand where we drank our coffee (although I managed to send half of my coffee flying as my rucksack fell off our little tripod stool) We then got home rapidly and jumped in the car, picking up our newspapers and dry-cleaning en-route and thoroughly confusing the sat-nav as we seemed to keep going in the wrong direction) The heavens really opened and we drove to Bicester through masses of heavy rain but fortunately, our timings were perfect and we got there with a quarter of an hour to spare before our lunch appointment and finding some parking quite easily. There we met with our friends for a wonderful Mediterranean meal (in a Turkish restaurant, which we have visited several times before) but I think we were conscious, right throughout the meal, that there was an impending lock-down and this might be the last meal together for quite some time (and so it proved to be). By the time we had finished our meal, we strolled down the pedestrianised High Street to have a post-prandial coffee and then we knew we had to make haste to get home. Fortunately, the heavy rain had finished by now so the journey home was quite uneventful. Then we had a fairly quick turn-around before we departed for our normal Saturday night church service – again, we were wondering if this was going to be the last time for some time. Once we eventually did get home, we were just about in time to catch some of the Downing Street announcements and press conference but availed ourselves of watching the France v. Ireland rugby match which occupied us nearly all of the evening. Then we waited unto the late evening news to get the full story of the new lock-down.

Naturally, we are interested in seeing how the new rules of lock-down will apply to Meg and myself. It seems that our daily walk to the park is still quite legitimate – even sitting on a park bench is now specifically allowed (according to Sky news!) Domestic help with the cleaning of the house will still be permitted, but attendance at church services is now out-of-bounds (except for private prayer – so that puts paid to our Saturday night excursions for a little while) It looks as though gyms are due to close so that means my Pilates class will bite the dust – I will probably join my Pilates’ teacher Zoom sessions if these are going to be put on again. Social mixing with other people inside their houses is now not allowed but the rules allow you to meet with one other person outside the house. (I can see this rule causing all kinds of difficulties as, so often, outside the house you meet with couples. Do you avoid talking to both of them? Or only one of them at a time? I am not sure how this has been thought through and how the police who are responsible for ensuring compliance with the law are going to deal with this one)

It will be interesting for me when I get round to watching ‘What the Papers Say‘ to see what the popular reaction to all of this is going to be. Boris Johnson is trying to sell the package on the basis ‘if we do this right, we might be able to enjoy Christmas a little more’ which I suppose is a sort of lifeline for many – if you think restrictions are going to be lifted after only one month (which I very much doubt). Speaking, absolutely personally, I am quite pleased that Boris Johnson has grasped the nettle and not dithered about any more. It is interesting to the principal correspondents from the main news channels (I am thinking of Laura Kuensberg for the BBC, Beth Rigby for Sky News both asked essentially the same question in the press conference i.e. why did you not act sooner, – say two weeks ago – and save 1,000s of lives. The answer was predictable (‘blather..blatther..blatther .. difficult balance, had to protect the economy as well as people’s lives, blather.. blather…’) I suspect that the right-wing of the Tory party will be incandescent with rage again but will they vote against the measures when they come (eventually) before Parliament? I suspect they may not but I am sure that Boris will now be ditched at the first possible opportunity when the immediate storm clouds have passed!

Today turned out to be an unseasonably mild day – the leaves were swirling around us in a wind that was not the bitter, biting kind you normally get in the autumn and winter but rather a mild and gentle kind. Having collected our newspapers (the very last ‘Times‘ in the shop!) we met with one of ‘park’ friends who we have not seen for a few days. She is a wheelchair user and comes to the park most days so we congratulated each other on keeping going to get our fresh air and exercise even while the intensity of COVID-19 seems to be increasing. On our way up the hill, we encountered our Italian friend who we have not seen for several days and we exchanged some very pleasant minutes together talking about families amongst other things. We made a general arrangement to meet over Christmas in one or other of our houses for a Christmas mince pie and sherry – although that is some way off, it’s nice to know that in the very truncated Christmas that faces us, we still have a circle of friends with whom we can commune. This lunchtime, we treated ourselves to one of my traditional curries (which I share with our domestic help) and now that I have discovered the joys of packets of cauliflower rice, I can eat my traditional curry without fear of sending my carbohydrate balance into overdrive.

Last night, we discovered rather late on that Oxford City is being ‘promoted’ to Tier 2 which puts into jeopardy our lunchtime date with friends tomorrow, where we were going to visit one of the of the Oxford museums before repairing to a meal. So, instead, after some emails and telephone calls, we went onto ‘Plan B’. Now we are going to eat in a Turkish restaurant in Bicester which has an excellent local reputation. The location is approximately equidistant between the two of us and it is quite easy to access from the motorway (and parking can be found quite easily) so we have rescued something from the lockdown restrictions, whilst keeping within the law.To be honest, Oxford was one of the last places I expected to be moved up a Tier and I wonder whether the great influx of students into the University (24,000 converging on the city) a few weeks ago has anything to do with the sudden increase in the COVID-19 infection rate. This seems more likely as I have seen a report that the COVID-19 infection rates in university cities such as Sheffield, Manchester and Birmingham are up to SEVEN times greater than in the surrounding areas.

As the USA election approaches, the issue of ‘voter suppression’ is rearing its ugly head. Let us imagine that you are a staunch, and very committed Republican voter, who has followed the polling news given in various websites – you will be aware that Trump has trailed Biden by every poll since last January and the latest ‘poll of polls’ puts Biden at 52% and Trump at 43% – a 9% gap. As you know that approx. 50% of the electorate has already voted, then to reverse this pattern you would need a Trump polling figure of 52% (and Biden at 43%) within the next few days. To put on an increase of 9% in your share of the vote in the last 4 days would seem to be almost completely impossible, given you had been behind in the polls for the last nine months! So what to do? The only viable strategy is to get as many who think like you to come out to vote in person next Tuesday and do whatever you can to deter Biden supporters (more likely the not to be black voters) from voting, This can be achieved in a variety of ways.One is to get every retired policeman you know to turn up with preferably (large) weapons to march up and down the voting lines so as to act as ‘eyes and ears’ for the Republicans. Another technique is to rely upon your legislators in your local City hall to restrict the number of ballot boxes in your local area. So, far example, the Texas (Republican) governor has  limited drop boxes to one per county. In Harris county, Texas, home to Houston, that’s one box for 4.7 million people.  To round off, this merry section of news, the channel MSNBC (one of the liberal Main Street Media) has assembled a series of clips, including one from Trump himself, arguing that if the size of the electorate increases, the Republicans are always going to lose – and therefore, to ‘win’ you have to suppress the anti-Trump vote as much as you can relying upon the various courts (and the Supreme Court) to back up the decision. This is going to play out in the USA increasingly over the next few days. Watch this space!

Today was a typical autumn day with a lot of low-hanging cloud and weather where the rain was sort of hanging in the air – i.e. not quite a drizzle but certainly feeling a little damp. I walked down to town briskly on my own this morning to collect our ration of newspapers because we had a lunch date in our favourite little cafe in Droitwich, to the south of us. We decided to take our son with us and as a threesome enjoyed a roast of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and all of the trimmings. The dinners are so large that we never have room for the sweets which are homemade (like trifles) and which are, no doubt, delicious. We ate early today because we needed to get back in time for our Waitrose delivery which was scheduled too arrive between 2.00 and 3.00 but in practice, turned up a little later. I have now added to my stock of Newcastle Brown Ale as I am getting well prepared for the election marathon night/day following the US election on Tuesday. It seems that over 75 million Americans have already cast their vote either by mailing in their ballot paper. or else by dropping them off at special ‘ballot drop boxes’ which seem to be a particular feature of this year’s election. Some states have had them for years but the popularity of this type of voting has increased tremendously with the COVID-19 virus ripping through communities. They have to be cemented into the ground and are subject to surveillance by video camera so, in theory, they should be tamper proof. The 75 million is well in excess of the 130+ million who voted in the 2016 Trump v. Clinton election and is probably one half of the 150 million who may well be voting in 2020. This is the point at which the story starts to get confusing. Each state has different laws regarding when the contents of ‘mailed-in’ and ‘ballot box drop’ votes will be counted. Some states will not start counting until the ballot has officially ‘closed’ whereas some other states allow for pre-processing e.g. taking the ballots out of their envelopes, checking that they are valid/legal votes  etc. before the actual counting starts.

Now why should all of this matter? Well the following scenario may well play out. Pennsylvania is a crucial ‘battle-ground’ or ‘swing’ state which Trump just captured last time – but all of the indications are that Biden is narrowly ahead this year. However, we know that Republican voters typically vote in person whilst Democrat voters make more use of mailed-in or ballot drop boxes. The ‘in person’ votes are counted first so the initial indications may well be that Trump retained Pennsylvania – but the true result may well be known only in a few days time when the mailed-in votes are counted. So it is quite conceivable that Trump will declare he has ‘won’ Pennsylvania and attempt to use an army or lawyers to delay or invalidate the counting of the mailed-in votes, appealing all the way to the Supreme Court in the process (one of the reasons why he was so keen to get his own nominee, a proven conservative, to be confirmed in their position on the Supreme Court  only days before the election). So if the result in Pennsylvania is critical for getting the requisite votes in the Electoral College (the magic figure of 280 vote) then we may now know the result of Tuesday’s election for days (or even a week or so) later. The scenario I have just outlined for Pennsylvania could well be repeated for each of the other crucial battle-ground states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida for a start)- no doubt we will see in the days following Tuesday (I hesitate to even say Wednesday)

And now to the UK domestic scene. The rate at which the COVID-19 virus is accelerating with an intensity and a ferocity not only in the UK but also in France and Germany is a source of real concern. More areas are being moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2 even today – residents in areas of Yorkshire and the Humber, parts of the West and East Midlands, as well as Luton and Oxford City will come under stricter measures. This may put our trip to Oxford on Saturday under some jeopardy but we shall have to wait and see. It looks as though half the country will soon be in Tier 2 or Tier 3 from next Monday – and perhaps most of the country by Christmas!