We seem to have daily reports of things going wrong in the provision of our public services, the latest examples being the bad mistake made by the BBC in its edition of a Panorama programme detailing the track record of Donald Trump, to the failure in our prisons service and just a day ago abuse in a residential home for young offenders. However, I learnt that in the case of the Panorama programme, the editing error actually occurred in a small company to which the making of the documentary about Trump had been outsourced and the Panorama chiefs themselves were unaware of the edit mistake. But this got me thinking about some of the wider issues involved and it has occurred to me that when errors do occur they are often (but not always) in the outsourced part of the service which had been insufficiently regulated. I wish to revisit the intellectual climate of the early 1990’s in this country where all governments were faced with a growing demand and call for services in all areas of our lives and government itself was finding it difficult, if not impossible, to be the provider of such services. The intellectual climate of the day was dominated by very much by what was called the ‘New Public Management’. New Public Management (NPM) is a managerial approach that uses private sector business techniques to improve the efficiency and accountability of public service organisations. Key features include performance measurement, competition, market mechanisms like contracting out, and treating citizens as customers. Critics argue that NPM can compromise public ethics and accountability, and erode public servants’ sense of duty, though it has also led to some innovations. One particular book captured the spirit of this new approach and it was Osborne and Gaebler: Reinventing Government published in 1992. The whole thesis of this book can be summed up in 4 words which is that the role of government in its provisions of services to the citizenry should be ‘steering rather than rowing’ this approach indicated that governments should not provide services themselves but outsource much of the day-to-operations of services to the companies in the private sector whilst the role of government was to commission and then to monitor companies or other agencies to be the actual provider of the services. I very much witnessed this in the care provided for Meg in the final year or so of her life when, in theory, the county council social services department was responsible for providing care for Meg but in practice the actual care service was provided by a private agency. Social services paid for the service but if there were shortcomings in the service (e.g. a worker phoning in sick at a few minutes notice so that I myself was often called in to physically assist the one care worker who actually turned up to care for Meg even through handling was a ‘two person’ job) then social services would not necessarily be aware of shortcomings in the service, unless they were extreme. So the wider point here is that government in both its national and local departments should spend a lot of its time in effort in commissioning and regulating but not actually providing. But the absence of sufficient resources which has led to the outsourcing in the first place has often led to a lack of regulation because government cannot regulate everything that is done in its name – if the regulation were to become too onerous and comprehensive, then the costs associated with this would be greater than the ‘savings’ associated with the outsourcing and the government should provide these services more directly. We find an extremely good example of this in the Probation service which was effectively outsourced a few years ago but the private sector agency made such a poor job of it all that the government was forced to bring it back ‘in house’ and to make the probation service a sort of extension to the prison service.

In the morning, I went along to my Tai Chi class and I found it quite enervating. But towards the end of the session my knees and hips are starting to complain a little but nothing that is unbearable. As soon as our class is over, I get together with mu ex-Bank manager friend and we always have a good wander down memory lane. Today, for example, we were having reminiscences about some of the films seen in our youth such as Cliff Richards: ‘Summer Holiday’ and a film called ‘A Summer Place’ Actually, the theme tune from this is still played with some regularity on ClassicFM radio station and the web tells me that the theme tune won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1961, the film being made in 1959. I think I saw it three times altogether although a modern audience would no doubt regard it as Americanised over-sentimentalised mush. But for the theme music to survive and still be played some 65 years later tells us something about the memorability of the tune. After our coffee, I hit the road to do my normal weekend shopping which was at Aldi which is reasonably quiet at this time in the morning. I bought a few extra things for our weekend meals and finally called in in to collect my daily newspaper and a TV programme guide I have started to buy on a weekly basis. Later in the afternoon, I received a text from my University of Winchester friend whose wife has now been admitted to a hospital with a lung infection where she will be treated with antibiotics and a whiff of oxygen. I am naturally more than a little upset and concerned on my friend’s behalf but I have despatched a text to offer whatever support and comfort I can muster over such a distance.

The Trump/Epstein affair is unfolding inch by inch – of course, if a’smoking gun’ is found, this could cause the end of the Trump presidency, Despite resisting a vote on the Epstein files for some time, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has defended his approach as being in favour of maximum transparency. The speaker, who is in charge of tabling votes in the lower chamber, said he was really opposed to the ‘reckless disregard’ for victims in the Democrats’ approach. A vote has now been forced via a discharge petition by House Democrats, which bypasses Johnson’s authority. He said ‘more is to come’ on Epstein, with the vote set for next week on releasing all unclassified files.

The day today turned out to be an unpredicted and unpredictable type of day. Sometimes, I go off down to the Methodist Centre but this morning, I changed my mind and after filling up the car with petrol and then collecting my newspaper, I thought there were some tidying up jobs that badly needed my attention so I decided to stay at home for most of the morning. I had some financial record keeping that I needed to keep up to date and then newspapers to review for useful articles before they get jettisoned and thrown out ready for collection first thing in the morning. It was a very dark day and raining cats and dogs as a huge band of rain was making its way slowly up through the Midlands. So it was a thoroughly depressing day and there was not much happening to lighten the mod of the moment. I received some fairly long texts from my University of Winchester friend who was explaining to me how first his daughter, and then himself and finally his exceptionally sick wife had succumbed to a new and very potent flu virus which is sweeping across the country and perhaps even the globe. This very nasty flu virus can co-exist with COVID and it appears that the last flu jabs may be rather ineffective in combatting it. What made things worse was that my friend who normally sees his sick wife every day was keeping away for a few days which the nursing staff had to try and explain to her – but she still caught the virus anyway. This means, apart from other things, that I shall not see my friend together with others when I travel down to Winchester on Friday.

In the late afternoon, my Droitwich friend and I texted each other as we were both feeling pretty low and needed to cheer each other up (which we did) We discussed some plans for the meal we were going to cook jointly on Saturday afternoon. As soon as she arrives, we are going to go to the very high quality butchers down the road and then come to my house to do some vegetable and other meal preparations. Then we both agreed that I should go and attend the church services which I usually do on a Saturday whilst my friend carried on preparing the meal which we can make into a leisurly affair on Saturday evening. My friend’s mother was in hospital in South Africa which we hope is just a short term problem and we are keeping our fingers crossed (although I have made the offer of some prayers as well) So we both have pretty busy days for the next couple of days which will make Saturday all the more enjoyable for the both of us. My friend and I have fairly similar patterns of pretty busy mornings but in the late afternoon, we are often left by ourselves which is why we seize the opportunities whilst we can to cook together and generally enjoy each other’s company.

Turning to the fascinations of US Politics, it appears that the Democrats have made a sort of concession which has allowed the Houses of Congress to reconvene and for the shut-down of the governmental machine to end. But the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have just released three emails linking Trump very closely with the Epstein affair. Members of the Oversight Committee have published three emails this morning, out of thousands the committee says it is reviewing from the Epstein Estate. One email alleges that Donald Trump spent hours with a victim.(We now know from a section, once redacted and now unredacted, that the victim was none other than Virginia Giuffre) In another, Epstein writes of Trump ‘Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine [sic] to stop’, according to the release by the Democrats. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and has previously called the allegations against him a hoax. We are still waiting to hear Trump’s response to the emails. Now what we have here is not exactly a smoking gun but the emails and particularly one of them is potentially very damaging to Trump. It indicates that Trump had spent hours in the company of Virginia Giuffre and several other young girls. We must conclude that Trump in the company of all of these young women (Giuffre being under-age) was not in Epstein’s house to play a simple card game of ‘Happy Families’ Now the emails do not point to directly to any inappropriate behaviour on the part of Donald Trump but Trump’s past associations with multiple young women leads to suspicions (and one must say that that is all) of inappropriate behaviour. Even if the Democrats, now their latest member is capable of being sworn in and are in a position to vote that the FBI release the whole of thousands of files which mention Trump by name, may get their way in the House of Representatives but the Trump dominated Senate (= Upper House) will probably still protect Trump by not agreeing to the release of the Epstein files. All we can say is that we are further along the road to full disclosure of the Epstein files in their entirety but not yet at the end of the journey.

The downfall of the Director General of the BBC may have to be viewed in a different light as we now learn about the part played by Sir Robbie Gibb, 61, who has a long history with the BBC, having been BBC News’ head of BBC Westminster and editor of live political programmes, as well as deputy editor of BBC Two’s Newsnight. He left BBC News in 2017 to become then prime minister Theresa May’s director of communications, a post he held until 2019.He was appointed to the BBC board in 2021 by Boris Johnson. In his role as non-executive director, he is responsible for ‘upholding and protecting the independence of the BBC by acting in the public interest and exercising independent judgement’, according to the BBC’s website. But as someone with incredibly close links with the Tories, he appears to have played a critical role in bringing the maladroit Panamera edit into the light of the day. This is quite ironic as it is often in the play script of the right wing enemies of the BBC that the BBC is in the hands of ‘lefties’ but the reverse appears to be the case.

The interesting news overnight which has hit the headlines of practically each one of our national daily newspapers is that Trump is to sue the BBC for $1 billion as recompense for the Panorama item which claims that he had incited the rebellion against the Capitol Building on 6 January, 2021. We know that Trump is a litigious individual and has fired off law suits against most of the liberal media on countless occasions. These law suits either end in failure or a settlement but the amount of the settlement is rarely, if ever, disclosed. Three questions (apart from many others) occur to us this morning. The first of these is whether such suing could be in a British or an American court because a British court would probably throw it out within seconds. A second question is whether Trump would have to prove any ‘reputational damage’ because his track record of downright lies is legendary. Certainly a British court would surely take the view that Trumps record of mendacity implies that he does not have a reputation for truth or honesty which is capable of losing. But a third and intriguing possibility is that if a writ emerges, then a counter claim could immediately be issued as Trump called the BBC ‘corrupt’ which is a huge claim and, as well as being factually incorrect would be a claim impossible to sustain. No doubt a grovelling apology of sorts will be issued and the threat of court action against the BBC will be quietly forgotten. Meanwhile, the BBC has problems of its own because a new Director General of the BBC has to be found  and then installed whist a campaign has to be started to restore the BBC’s claim for honesty and probity in reporting. Certainly, the role of the Daily Telegraph in bringing this whole affair into the light has to be questioned because that newspaper and other right wing elements are always seeking an opportunity to attack the BBC and, of course, this particular lapse of editorial standards has given them a gift-wrapped early Christmas present. Returning to domestic issues, my Droitwich friend is sufficiently recovered to return to her own house (although still in quite a lot of pain) but normal life (ie work! family!) has to be resumed. Our domestic help turned up in the morning and so the three of us had some jolly conversations and established some connections in common.  It is true to say that my kitchen is looking a tad less cluttered now that I have had some friendly helpers who have encouraged me to put things away where they live in cupboards and to have some rationalisation of things that used to reside along the top of my kitchen work surfaces. One I have things all neat and tidy, I have plenty of incentive to keep things that way.  I am still privately delighted about the way in which I got my study reorganised in such a way that I can immediately file away a document or put my hand on anything that I know is stored in the filing system somewhere.

In the morning, my friend and I had a fairly lazy time and we chatted quite a lot with our domestic help as well. Then I went off to a local supermarket both to pick up some supplies but also taking the opportunity to access the ATM and to pick up my copy of a newspaper. When I returned home, my friend and  decided to cook some lunch together and we treated ourselves to some rather fine sausages  which we complemented with some home-made mashed potato and some petit pois. Then we started to make arrangements for the transport of my friend back home. What I thought was going to be quite a dull November just to be ‘endured’ as it were is getting filled up with social engagements, not least the trip down to Winchester this Friday. Although I saw some of my erstwhile colleagues o the occasion of Meg’s funeral, there are several I have not seen for some 2-3 years so I am looking forward to seeing them again after all of this time. There is quite a lot of talk about the impact that the budget will have when it is delivered in a couple of week’s time. In past times, the leak of a budget secret was judged to be the most heinous of political crimes but today even governments leak some of their plans in advance. It seems almost certain that income tax will rise by about 2p in the pound and this is judged to be the easiest and the quickest way to raise a lot of money pretty quickly.  The government may attempt to soften the blow by reducing National Insurance contributions by the same amount. But this probably having the effect of increasing tax on the retired (as they do not pay National Insurance contributions) and the wealthier portion of taxpayers. A few ‘back of an envelope’ calculations indicates to me that what I shall gain on the roundabouts I may lose on the swings  as the planned ‘cost of living’ increases for next April will probably be cancelled out by the rise in income tax.

Now that it has been six months since I lost Meg to dementia, I have come to appreciate the importance of social relationships. When you are in the middle of the ‘work’ phase of one’s life, then the majority of one’s life space is concerned with the actual process of work, having a family life and all of the domestic jobs of running a home and social life just get fitted in ‘around the edges’ as it were. Whilst I was caring for Meg and particularly in the last year of her life, I had carers calling in four times a day and a host of nurses, medics, occupational therapists, church visitors and so on so I was never short of bodies around, so to speak. But now I am in a very different ‘life space’ if I can put it that way, and maintaining a variety of social contacts has become a central life interest for me. Some of my circle of friends and acquaintances is diminishing (as when people sell up to be nearer to their family which I well understand) but if I did nothing but chug along then my social circle would gradually shrink and this is not a good thing. So I am trying hard to maintain a good social life and to see and maintain my friendships whenever I can, as well as seizing any opportunities of expanding my social circle.

The really shock news that shook the UK yesterday was the news of the enforced resignation of the Director General of the BBC, Tim Davie. The BBC Director General and CEO of News, Deborah Turness, resigned on Sunday night, after criticism that Panorama misled viewers in editing a speech by Donald Trump. The Telegraph published a leaked BBC memo suggesting the programme pushed two parts of Trump’s speech together, so he appeared explicitly to encourage the Capitol Hill riots of January 2021. The two sentences attributed to him were actually spoken by Trump but were an hour apart in time but made to appear as though one sentence immediately followed the other. This made it appear that Trump had specifically endorsed the riotous attack on the White House following Trump’s loss of the election in January 6th, 2021. This was undoubtedly an evident, not to say stupid, edit of Trump’s words although not untrue to fact as Trump has actually uttered the two sentences, albeit about an hour apart. Having been alerted, the White House immediately claimed that the BBC was the purveyor of ‘fake news’ and have then reacted with undisguised glee at the ousting of the BBC Director General. What is so galling abut this whole affair is that the BBC have made one very bad error of editorial judgement but have generally striven very hard to be impartial and to be fair. But the White House has regularly been responsible for a mountain of truths, half truths  and exaggerations over the Trump years within being subject to any real criticism from any of the Main Street Media, including of course, the BBC.  To add to this editorial lapse of judgement, there have been other slips of judgement over, for example, the reporting of the war in Gaza where the BBC has been accused of bias. One of the accusations is that the BBC’s Arabic service was guilty of bias in its reporting of the war in Gaza but even if this was partly true, it is hardly surprising  given the listenership to the BBC’s Arabic service which must exclude 99.9% of the UK population.  Although the right wing press in the UK had not been restrained in following Donald Trump in criticising the BBC, the counter reaction has been led by the Liberal Democrats. Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, who has said we must stand up for a free press and free speech, responding to news that the BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness have resigned. ‘The BBC is not perfect, but it remains one of the few institutions standing between our British values and a populist, Trump-style takeover of our politics. The resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness must be an opportunity for the BBC to turn a new leaf, rebuild trust and not give in to the likes of Nigel Farage who want to destroy it. As a public service broadcaster, the BBC’s role is vital in ensuring our democracy is based on facts, scrutiny, and accountability. We must stand up for a free press, free speech, and a strong, independent BBC, to stop Trump’s America becoming Farage’s Britain.’ So this row will rumble on for days and, in the meantime, Donald Trump and the White House have become even more emboldened as they gleefully disseminate the fact that the BBBC as well as much of the remainder of the liberal press in the western world is the purveyor of ‘fake news’ But one has to ask the question that what on earth possess the BBC producers not to recognise that their maladroit editing of Trump’s speeches would be quickly spotted and be subjected to immediate criticism. But at the end of the day, Trump did actually utter the two sentences attributed to him and surely a BBC editor could have inserted a comment to indicate that one sentence was not immediately uttered after the other. An esteemed commentator, Nick Robinson, a presenter of the Today programme and the Political Thinking podcast, shared several posts about the resignations on X. ‘It is clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation… Both things are happening at the same time.’ Meanwhile, Trump has been busy issuing pardons to anybody concerned with the attack on the Capitol building, thus reinforcing the narrative that he is trying to convey that he was essentially robbed of the Presidential election by massive voter fraud. But no independent analyst has managed to come up with the slightest proof that the presidential 2020 election was won fraudulently and Trump lost the popular vote by 4.5% But we are witnessing here one of the biggest ‘rewriting of history’ episodes to be taking place in modern times and one which the Democrats may well be incapable of overturning in the future.

This morning has been the morning of the last day to complete my friend’s recovery process before she returns to her own home tomorrow. We spent the morning both simultaneously cooking and helping to tidy up and reorganise the contents my kitchen. I have to admit that with looking Meg for so long the kitchen was just a place into which I had to dash and cook a meal in the shortest possible time and it is fair comment that to say that some of the contents of my store cupboards had become a little haphazard over time and some food items, particularly on the spice rack,  had become out of date and needed some pruning. So, my friend was simultaneously cooking me an excellent Asian meal whilst reorganising the kitchen whilst I watched from the sidelines. But I did pop down into town to get some fresh ingredients to enhance our meal and then we had a really satisfying meal together in the middle of the day, followed by the kind of siesta that we would enjoy if we were on a Spanish, rather than an English timetable. Later on in the day no doubt we will watch a little bit of TV together and then my friend will have completed the few days since her operation, recovering pretty well before we both return our more normal existences together tomorrow. Tonight, I am looking forward to having a conversation with a friend with whom I am re-establishing contact after a period of some years.

Well you are never quite sure what a day is going to bring. My friend, who I have been looking after for the last day or so, is recovering her strength and vitality after her operation so we are thinking about the day ahead. She is very skilful in all of the culinary arts so we spent some time planning out how we could make a Sunday roast from the various contents of my freezer and store cupboard, so this is a task for later on in the day. She was brought up in her youth on a farm and was used to having lots of fresh produce constantly surrounding her but it does make you realise how full of junk food a lot of the supermarkets happen to be in this country. This weekend has been full of conversations where we talk not only of family matters but also of the ways in which we both intend to keep ourselves fit and healthy with a judicious combination of diet and exercise. We both do Pilates exercises so may take the opportunity to explore ways in which we can exchange the techniques that work well for us and which we can incorporate into our daily or weekly routines. Having a Pilates and a Tai Chi class each week is enough for me at the moment, though, particularly as I am trying not to miss doing 20 minutes of Pilates in my bedroom each morning as part of my daily routine.

The energy policy of the country is not normally a subject that evokes a great deal of excitement around the breakfast table but there are developments afoot that give one pause for thought. The US under the direction of Donald Trump is abandoning projects, even nearly completed ones, based upon renewables such as wind power and investing heavily in the fuels of ‘yesterday’ such as oil and gas, flying in the face of climate change. But there are some estimates that the USA is going to run into an energy crisis as the new data centres, the nerve centres of the AI developments, are massive consumers of power and it may well be that the US is going to run into major problems. Paradoxically, the easiest and quickest way to expand energy supplies is to invest in renewables and this is the direction in which China, despite the proliferation of ‘dirty’ coal powered energy plants, is choosing to follow. So here we have the world’s two largest economies pursuing different paths towards energy growth and I think my money would be on the Chinese rather than the Americans as the likeliest winner in this contest. Here in the UK, though, despite progress in electricity, fossil fuels still make up about 75% of the UK’s total energy use, which includes transportation, heating, and manufacturing processes. Renewables generated 50.4% of the UK’s electricity in 2024, surpassing fossil fuels for the fourth time in five years, according to RenewableUK. The increase is primarily due to offshore wind and solar generation capacity. In 2024, wind power generated the largest proportion of renewable electricity, followed by bioenergy, solar, and hydro.

This morning was a quiet Sunday morning but I did make a journey down into town to pick up a copy of my Sunday newspapers and to pick up some vegetables for Sunday lunch. My friend and I decided we would make a sort of Sunday roast complete with oven roasted vegetables so we parboiled a selection of vegetables (potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, peppers and leeks). My friend prepared a marinade for the meat from some of the South African spices she had recently brought back from her holiday visit to her family) and I made an onion gravy and ‘liberated’ the last of some Yorkshire puddings hidden in the recesses of the freezer. We complemented the meal with some mushrooms cooked in butter and some tender-stem broccoli done in the microwave. The meal turned out to be absolutely delicious but as you might imagine the dinner we prepared was huge and probably bigger than our normal Christmas dinner, so we have plenty left over to provide an almost instant meal for the next day or so. Browsing the BBC News website, one item caught my attention, so much so that I ran off the article on my printer for a more detailed read and study. The report focused on our vagus nerve which starts in the brain and then connects with every major organ in the body which controls things about which we do not think such as breathing, heart rate and digestion. The article details how it might be possible to stimulate this nerve and almost to reset it which might help with feelings of depression, anxiety or even work-induced burnout. Now we all know that life is never that simple but if there is a simple technique that we can all utilise to diminish the amount of stress in our lives, then this can only be a good thing. November is generally a fairly quiet and uneventful month once Bonfire Night is out of the way and before we start the run up towards Christmas. But in a few days time, I am going to undertake a journey to Winchester to meet up with my ex-colleagues who formed a ‘de facto’ dining club that we call the Old Fogies. This day is often doubly pleasurable because we have a meal first and then those of us who are not driving can enjoy a session in a local pub afterwards and this has its own particular pleasures. Then in about a fortnight’s time, I have been invited out to a classical concert which is something to which to look forward and is a break from my usual routine. There is an interesting small article in todays ‘Sunday Times‘ which I found interesting. The (female) head of St Paul’s School in London has recently declared that ‘it is much harder to be a young man than 20-30 years ago’. Decades ago in educational circles there was concern about the gender gap in which girls were said to underperform. But for quite a long time now, girls have our-performed boys from when they start school until the end of their university days. The head was arguing that masculinity had become inextricably linked to toxicity and that the future of boys could be considered problematic. I think it is a fair comment that young men have lost some of their traditional role models and find their future roles somewhat harder to navigate than young women for whom many more doors now appear to be open.

The evening before yesterday, I picked up my friend from the hospital in Solihull where she was having a procedure undertaken on her shoulder. The hospital allowed me into my friend’s room where she was tucking into some food which the hospital had provided, Then it was  case of getting the post operative checks done and into the car to come home.  We drove home through the rush hour traffic,  pitch blackness and the rain and then it was a case of straight into bed and some medication to help her sleep. After a couple of hours of rest, she came downstairs and I served up a bowl of Thai soup with some Naan bread and I was relieved that her operation site was not proving too painful even though the procedure itself was. And then it was bed for the second time that evening and I think that sleep came fairly easily. In the course of our conversation, it was mentioned that a TV might be a good addition in that particular bedroom and so whilst my friend was sleeping, I busied myself thinking about the logistics of installing a TV in the bedroom. The very first thing to do was to hunt for the remote control which I was incredibly fortunate in being able to locate despite it not being any where near the TV which it controlled. Then I looked in my drawer of electrical communications gear and managed to find an extra bit of coaxial cable to extend the aerial lead including the appropriate connectors as well as an extension lead. I made sure that the whole set up worked by a trial run in the empty bedroom next to the one occupied by my friend. We had already agreed that I would make a check on her in the middle of the night and I think we were both relieved that she was fine when when morning came,  I aroused my friend with a cup of coffee and successfully installed the TV so that she could look at it without straining her neck. Then we had an extended chat, got ourselves ready and then had a light breakfast together. I introduced my friend to the nice healthy breakfast in which I indulge each morning which is basically a small, home ripened avocado, split in two and de-stoned and eaten with some seafood sauce. Then we planned out a nice leisurely day such that my friend could gradually effect her recovery Later in the morning we may enjoy the delights of Sanders Park together as well wandering down to Waitrose to pick up my newspaper and some free coffee. There is a good film on BBC2 this afternoon which we might well watch but I am sure most of the day will be filled up with the chatter of how we are negotiate our lives in the weeks ahead, including Christmas. I think that under the circumstances, church may well be given a miss this weekend but I am just filled with feelings of great relief that my friend is not in severe pain which was a possibility after the procedure that she endured yesterday. She slept for a certain amount of time this morning and then I proceeded to make a light lunch of salad and some Spanish chorizo. 

In the afternoon, I was delighted to see  what I think was almost a live transmission of New Zealand versus Ireland Rugby Union match. At half time, the Irish were in the lead but as so often happens, the All Blacks seemed to find hidden reserves of energy and inventiveness  in their play and eventually won the match quite convincingly. I watched some of the Winston Churchill film ‘Their Darkest Hour’ first broadcast some eight yeas ago and no doubt shown on the eve of Remembrance Sunday, I prepared a supper of some barbecued pork ribs bought yesterday in the supermarket as a treat for the two of us and the meal was accompanied by some mashed potato and green beans, spiced up with a little chorizo.

Sky News is reporting that the Home Office is looking at what Denmark is doing to cut illegal migration. Last month, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood dispatched officials to the Nordic nation to study its border control and asylum policies, which are considered some of the toughest in Europe. In particular, officials are understood to be looking at Denmark’s tighter rules on family reunion and restricting most refugees to a temporary stay in the country. Ms Mahmood will announce a major shake-up of the UK’s immigration system later this month, PA is reporting. Labour MPs are said to be split on the move. Some, in so-called Red Wall seats which are seen as vulnerable to challenge from Reform UK, want ministers to go further in the direction Denmark has taken. But others believe the policies will estrange progressive voters and push the Labour Party too far to the right. Certainly the rules that Denmark have adopted seem pretty draconian. In Denmark, most asylum or refugee statuses are temporary. Residency can be revoked once a country is deemed safeIn order to achieve settlement, asylum seekers are required to be in full-time employment, and the length of time it takes to acquire those rights has been extended. Denmark also has tougher rules on family reunification – both the sponsor and their partner are required to be at least 24 years old, which the Danish government says is designed to prevent forced marriages. The sponsor must also not have claimed welfare for three years and must provide a financial guarantee for their partner. Both must also pass a Danish language test. In 2018, Denmark introduced what it called a ghetto package, a controversial plan to radically alter some residential areas, including by demolishing social housing. Areas with over 1,000 residents were defined as ghettos if more than 50% were ‘immigrants and their descendants from non-Western countries ‘ I doubt that anything approaching this level severity will actually get through the House of Commons as presently constituted but the direction of travel is quite clear. It is almost certainly the case that the Reform party is settling the political agenda with the Tory Party and the Labour party in hot pursuit. I could be argued that the issue of immigration has dominated British politics for a decade up and including the Brexit campaign and will probably intensify for the next few years ahead.

I always knew that yesterday was going to be quite a busy day and so it proved to be. I awoke at 6.00am and got up, fairly promptly, because I knew that at 8.30a I was due to receive a routine monitoring call from a hospital clinic.I even got two reminders about this by ex, one of them in the evening before. Then I am scheduled to take my Droitwich friend to a clinic in Solihull where she is due to have a procedure conducted upon a nerve in her neck and this is going to occupy some of my own activities during the day.

It is evident that American politics have been absorbing a lot of my attention these days. It is now a year since Trump was elected and he has been celebrating with a crowd of the glitzy and we would say ‘well-eeed’ in Miami, Florida. Here, investors and the already wealthy still adore Trump who they feel is delivering to them the kind of largesse that they do not really need but are gratefully lapping it up. But America is an incredibly divided society and there are millions of Americans enduring the most incredible hardships at the moment. With the government effectively shut down at the moment, several government aid programmes are effectively suspended, The most important of these is called SNAP Established in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) , also known as food stamps, is the United States’ largest anti-hunger program, helping an average of 41.7 million —or 1 in 8—Americans per month. In the absence of anything  approaching an NHS, the USA citizenry rely upon MedicAid which is not shut down because it is funded differently from other government operations, and there is enough funding for it through the end of the calendar year. However, a government shutdown could lead to delays in processing claims and reduced staffing for functions like eligibility verification, potentially making it harder for some people to access healthcare services. If a shutdown were to continue beyond the end of the year, states might need to use their own funds to keep the program running.  But the greatest impact on poor Americans will be felt in the Affordable Care Act where health insurance premiums on the marketplace are projected to rise significantly due to expiring tax credits. Without these subsidies, monthly costs could double on average, with some individuals facing an increase of over $1,000 per year. This is causing concern among families who have come to rely on these subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year. This is the Act which requires Congressional approval in order to receive federal funding and is one of the reasons why the Republicans, in particular want the Congress to remain closed so that any legislation to extend the Affordable Care Act can be passed. So we have a situation in the USA at the moment where some Americans are getting wealthier by the day, particularly the large corporations whilst many more millions of Americans are literally starving and not knowing where their next meal comes from. All of this is the backdrop to the success that the Democratic Party received in the recent polls where the Party is getting poised to fight the mid-term elections in a year’s time which could alter the composition of the Congress, potentially wiping out the Republican majorities in the House of Representatives (analogous to our House of Commons) The framers of the American constitution in the 18th century tried to devise a system where there was a balance of powers. But they did not really envisage a situation in which both Houses of Congress and the Presidency and the Supreme Court were all controlled by one party, assisted by an overwhelmingly right wing media which is, of course, a recent phenomenon.

In the morning, I called in at a local supermarket to use their ATM and pick up a copy of my newspaper. Then I made my way to Droitwich to pick um my friend and take her to the private clinic in Solihull where she is due to have a procedure on a painful nerve in her neck. Both the procedure itself and its aftermath  are liable to be pretty painful so my friend and I have a plan of action to help her to recover. She will stop for a couple of days or so to get over the immediate trauma f the operation and in the bedroom which she will occupy I already have my spare electric blanket pressed into us and also have available a neck-shaped hot water bottle (shaped like a question mark or ?) which fortuitously I found in a. charity shop. I had planned to stay in Solihull and do some shopping in the John Lewis and the Robert Dyas stores but when we both realised that our friend might not be ready for discharge from the hospital until 6 in the afternoon, we had a rapid change of plan and I decided to come home. As she will not have eaten all day, when I returned from Bromsgrove I bought some readily consumed comestibles for my friend in case she is starving hungry and, whilst I was at it, bought quite a lot of extra things that I think we both might enjoy in the meals that I will prepare in the next day or so. Then  I got another message that my friend might be allowed to go home at 5.00pm so another change of plan was agreed that I arrive at the hospital half an hour early so that she could be whisked home without delay. Having looked after Meg for 30 years, I am sure that looking after my friend post operatively should provide no problems assuming no complications but we need to check that there are no wounds that need dressing or attention over the weekend. At least I know the District Nurses are at hand in case of emergency. I have a film lined up to watch on YouTube ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ which I shall enjoy watching for about the third or fourth time but my friend still has that treat in store. If the film fails to entertain I know that a lot of interesting and accessible music is available should the need arise for something more calming.

Looking at the planning whiteboard I maintain in our kitchen, I am reminded of the act that in just about a week’s time there is to be meeting of the lunch-time dining club which goes under the name of ‘The Old Fogies’ This all dates back to a period of time when several of us work colleagues realised that at least four of us had birthdays in May and mine just happened to be in the middle of the month. So we started to have a communal celebratory meal in  May and we complemented this with another meal in the autumn generally at about the time of the start of term and this tradition has carried on almost unabated for the last twenty years. We are a group of colleagues who all enjoyed each other’s company and retired more or less within a few years of each other. Since then we have carried on with this tradition but the experience of COVID was an evident huge interruption and the ‘gram reaper’ has taken its toll of a few of our number as well. But I imagine there are about eight of us who will enjoy a meal where we feel inclined to reminisce about how good things were when we were in charge and how terrible they are now. I am the farthest flung of the group so after we have had our meal and dispersed, I generally have an hour or so before I can catch my train back to the Midlands. So we have got into the habit of repairing to a local Wetherspoons in Winchester were we can sit around a table and extend the conversations not always possible when we are seated around a dinner table. I saw many of these colleagues six months ago on the sad occasion of Meg’s funeral but, that apart, I have not been able to attend many of the get togethers in later years whilst I was caring for Meg in her declining years. I must get cracking and get the train ticket booked whilst I can and often  go from Birmingham International or even Warwick Parkway as this cuts out the link in to Birmingham New Street and saves some time (and a little money as well). There is a survey reported this morning that Aldi has been knocked off its top spot for being the cheapest supermarket in the UK to be replaced by Lidl, particularly if special offers are taken into account. These days I tend to vacillate between Aldi and Lidl depending on whether I have a heavy or a light week and even ease of parking comes into the equation. Thursdays is my  usual shopping day but this is preceded by a session of Tai Chi and hopefully a cup of tea and a good natter with my (male) friend in the local Methodist Centre. This can mean that the whole of Thursday mornings are well and truly occupied by the time I have the shopping unpacked and the lunchtime meal cooked.

Thinking that I ought to act quickly, I went on to my favourite train tickets booking line (called ‘thetrainline’). I had almost made up my mind to got to Winchester via BNS (Birmingham New Street) instead of cutting off the corner by going via Birmingham International. But the train times seemed exactly right for me and I actually don’t mind undertaking the entire journey by train which, although it takes longer avoids the quite steep car parking charges and negotiating Birmingham International and the M40 in the dark, which  it will be when I return. I was amazed how cheaply I purchased the tickets and I am sure I only paid about two thirds of what I paid last time I undertook this journey. Of course going in November is helpful and I think the trainline app is utilising ‘split ticketing’ which is helping to lower the cost of the whole journey. My son and daughter popped by this morning as they told me that they would and we are discussing the kinds of Christmas food in which we are going to indulge. As a rule, I tend to avoid turkey and go for what I like (beef) but this year we are probably settling on some god lamb shanks. I promised to prepare the vegetables and intend to put the sprouts on at about 11.00pm the night before to ensure that thy are well done (family joke) My daughter-in-law just happens not to like any of the foods associated with Christmas so this year we are going to buy just what we want to eat and throw tradition to the wind. We have made a quick agreement not to buy each other presents this year but spend the money saved on the food that we happen to enjoy.

Whilst on the subject of organising things in advance, I have been contacted by one of Meg’s carers to see how I am am getting on and I suggested that we have a party again this year like we had last year. This suggestion went down very well and I was able to offer a house in which we could have singing and dancing and even a sleepover in a spare bed for those who might want to drink more than is safe for them to drive. There is a group of at least four of the ‘care’ youngsters who are great mates with each other and I am sure that there will be quite a few more who will take the opportunity to drop in. I knew in my heart of heart that last year’s party was likely to be the last that Meg attended and this, of course, it proved to be. Later in the morning I went down to the Methodist Centre and had my normal Tai Chi class with about a dozen other class members. Afterwards I was delighted to share a coffee with my new ex-bank manager friend and he told me that he was actually in the Centre yesterday but we must have missed each other, a bit like ships passing in the night. Anyway, we had a good old chat today that made up for the disappointment of yesterday and then I shot off to Aldi to do my weekly shop. Fortunately, the store is pretty quiet at this time mid morning and when I got home I had only forgotten a couple of things. 

Knowing it was going to be a ‘big night’ in American politics, I stayed up a little in the night to glean what was probably gong to happen in some important elections held in America – the first real test of public opinion in the mass since Trump started his new term. The Democrats were engaged in several races for governorships of states and were successful in three important contests. In the most important, Zohran Mamdani, 34, has won New York City’s race for mayor in a contest that rallied young voters and sparked debate about the future direction of the Democratic Party. The Ugandan-born Mamdani, a Socialist Democrat, beat former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, to become the youngest person in over a century to lead the largest city in the US. A self-described democratic socialist, he made affordability the central message of his campaign, pledging to expand social programmes paid for by new taxes on high earners and corporations. Democrats also won governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, and in California voters backed a proposition to redraw the congressional electoral map ahead of next year’s midterm elections. These elections are important because they give Democrats a new impetus and fresh directions in which to attack the Trump presidency and are an important precursor of the important mid-term elections next year when the composition of the US Congress may well change. President Trump’s approval ratings have taken a nosedive. Once the honeymoon is over, presidents tend to lose popularity quickly. But no recent president has fallen so low so quickly as Donald Trump. At the start of his second term public opinion was nearly evenly divided between those who approved of the president and those who did not. Now his net approval rating—those who approve of the job he is doing less those who do not—is minus 18. That is three percentage points lower than any point in his first term. Mr Trump’s numbers are poor even on the issues at the centre of his political platform. Net approval for his handling of immigration is minus 7. On inflation and prices, it is minus 33. The biggest shift away from Mr Trump has been among Americans under 30 years old. His net approval among that group was positive  when he returned to the Oval Office but now it is -40. His ratings among Hispanic and black Americans, which began negative, have also plummeted. And white Americans, who approved of him on net by 16 points back in January, are now evenly split. According to analysis by The Economist, every state, save Idaho, has moved against Mr Trump. Oklahoma has swung hardest, from positive 27 net approval to minus 12. The president nw has a 37% approval rating and a corresponding disapproval rating of 63%. It is the lowest rating of his second term seen in CNN polling and stands just one point higher than the 36% approval rating Trump had at this point in his first presidential term.

I knew that I needed to get my skates on and get a hotel booked for the Christmas visit to my family in Yorkshire. I used Expedia who gave me a discount for being a former customer of those and secured a room at a very good, and what I would regard as a ‘pre-Christmas’, rate. I have booked for only three nights, a day less than I had anticipated because a hospital appointment came through the day before forcing me to revise my plans somewhat and to curtail my visit by one day. But then I went and booked some train tickets which I also got at a very good price and not a great deal more than I would have spent on petrol in any case. So I am very relieved to get these bookings made and in the bag by acting promptly before prices rise.

Today is a day in the week when I have no firm commitments so I have made it a habit to go down to the Methodist Centre in the centre of town were there is a ‘chatty table’ round which anyone can sit and engage in conversation with others around the table. Today, though, did not turn out to be the happiest of experiences as I found myself, as by now I am accustomed, to be the only widower (i.e. male) amidst a group of widows. Today turned out to be unfortunate because the entire conversation within the group and sub groups around the table was a discussion of he comings and goings of their grandchildren. To this, there was evidently not an opportunity to contribute nor was it possible to move the conversation onto other topics. So I felt fairly acutely that not only was in a minority (being the only widower) but the lack of grandchildren made me feel even more of a minority within a minority. If you were to apply nationally published statistics  then as a widower without grandchildren, I am outnumbered by the ratio of 20:1 and therefore feel my minority status quite acutely. So after I had drunk my coffee and when it was not evidently leaving in the middle of a conversation flow, I departed feeling rather sorry for myself. I have to evaluate whether I even try to participate in this group next week and, of course, my one male friend, an ex-bank manager, was not there today. So, I re-parked the car in a car park adjacent to the centre of town were I went to pick up the engraved tag which I had bought yesterday. When I got it home, I discovered that quotation marks around ‘Sunshine’ had been omitted by the engraver and I think this alters the symbolism of the whole, so I will have to take it back and ask them to do again properly this time and following the clear text I had provided for them. I did not feel particularly hungry and had run out of bread so could not have a quick ‘fish on bread’ quickie lunch but I made myself a meal utilising some chicken and rice which I did not particularly enjoy. The TV viewing tonight is going to be a science-based on the power of the algorithm and as this dominates our lives these days, I feel it is probably well worth a watch.

Yesterday, I had allocated myself some viewing time for a series on BBC on ‘The Great Philosophers’ which I thought would be both illuminating and instructive. But the whole programme of 45 minutes was a conversation between two talking heads on a sofa (both eminent philosophers) which was not what I thought I was going to view. In practice you had to know at least some of the elements of the philosophy which was the subject of discussion before you could make head or tail of the programme and, even so, I fell asleep during it. So the programme was a bit of a disappointment and I may try just one more in the series (the first being Plato, the second Aristotle) and may then abandon this little project in favour of a return of the Alice Robert’s paleo-anthropology programmes which I find much more interesting. Yesterday, I also typed up a series of notes I had made of a video presentation I had seen on YouTube, the theme of which was how to live longer by adopting the correct series of routines with which to wake up each morning. Some of this sounded sensible (rotating ankles for example), some wacky (using coconut oil to rinse out one’s mouth first thing) and some even bizarre (such as drinking a pint of water laced with some pink salt and lemon juice) Again, I am trying some elements of this but will probably end up with a subset which seems a lot more sensible. I am still continuing with my little snippets of reflections each day and am posting these on the web and have utilised one of those web-names shortening routines to a version which is not copy protected but whose name is adapted in such a way that people and even web-bots are unlikely to come across it by accident. I follow what the political commentator Beth Rigby has to say because she is often ‘spot on’ with her analysis. Later on today there is going to be an announcement the net effect of which seems to be to soften us up for imminent tax rises and income tax itself seems to be the simplest fiscal tool to raise large amounts of money even though it has a ‘totemic’ status and the Labour Party in opposition pledged not to increase it. As Beth Rigby reports there is no need to tell you how difficult and contested this is going to be.  Only a year ago, the chancellor unveiled the biggest tax-raising budget since 1993 and said it was a ‘once in a parliament event’. MPs will be fearing a massive backlash should manifesto promises on not raising income tax (and VAT and national insurance) for working people be broken. Government figures know how hard it is going to be but argue the chancellor has to level with the public about the hard choices ahead and what is driving her decision-making. In fairness to the government, the world financial scene has altered so much recently not least with the Trump administration of tariffs left, right and centre and the slow growth experienced by the UK seems to be the same across all of the other major European economies.

In the morning after a long and customary char with our domestic help, I walked down into town and had a coffee with my elderly chorister friend. One of our usual number is in hospital and although she went in with a chest infection, it now looks as though she has other problems  that they are attempting to resolve. My friend and I are a little fearful as to what the future holds once she is discharged for what prospects may be in store for her. My friend rather ruefully remarked to me that it was not so long when we used to be six in number (my friend and her husband, Meg and myself and two more regular friends) and now we are reduced to just the two of us to chat away as or numbers are diminishing. My friend’s husband had dementia, and this has progressed to the point where he doe does not recognise his wife any more which is always a painful realisation. Earlier in the morning, I had looked at my watch and realised that it had stopped and needed a new battery so after coffee I took myself to a local cobblers to have the new battery replaced – and the price for this seem to have shot up in the last year or so. Whilst I was waiting for the new battery to be fitted, I idly browsed through a display of what were probably dog tags and I found a plain, oval dog tag which I promptly purchased. This has been in my mind for some time so  asked the shop to engrave it for me with the inscription ‘Meg (“Sunshine”)’ and this will be ready in about a day’s time. Then I intend, possibly with the assistance of my University of Birmingham friend, to go down to our local park and when the opportunity arises to affix it with superglue to the back of the iron bench upon which Meg and I used to sit regularly in our trips to the park. Here it will not attract undue attention but I will know that it is there and hopefully it will remain for some time to come. I walked home and then after a brief rest went and had my usual Pilates class, after which I returned home to a lunch of mackerel fillets spread with some seafood sauce and eaten upon a bed of salad leaves which is a lunch quick and easy to prepare after my Pilates session each week. Then I typically have a restful afternoon after which I know there are a couple of vintage comedy programmes for me to enjoy (episodes of ‘The Good Life‘ followed by ‘Yes, Minister‘) which is always broadcast at this time in the week. I know that today there are some important local elections in the USA but because of time differences we may not get the results until tomorrow. The Democrat candidate for the mayoral race in New York is DeZohran Mamdani who calls himself ‘Donald Trump’s worst nightmare’. They are the words of a man living the dream. It is because the 34-year-old is the headline act in Tuesday’s referendum on Trump 2.0. A statement night in US politics, as Americans – some, at least – deliver a verdict on what they’ve seen so far. Of four electoral contests across the US – including in California, New Jersey and Virginia – the race to be New York mayor is the most compulsive and consequential. The polls have Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, as the frontrunner. If he wins, it would signify big change in the Big Apple. This would be a wonderful launch pad for a Democratic candidate to challenge Donald Trump in about 2-3 years time.