Yesterday morning two of Meg’s regular carers turned up on time and got Meg washed, dressed and sitting in her wheelchair. When their care tasks are completed, the care staff assiduously fill in the two sets of reports that they have to make (a Task List and Care Plan notes) and they used an app called ‘Birdie’ which the care agency staff have enable me to download so that I can check on what has been said (which, in fact I do not need to) eventually, I hope a little functionality will be added so that I can check up on the time of the next scheduled visit (which is important to me, as I need to time my little trips out to ensure that I am back here on time) When they chat with each other at the end of a care session, the workers are always talking about the logistics of meeting with the next set of clients because despite the schedules that are done on a weekly basis, this can change by the day and even by the hour. After we had breakfasted, we made our way on a really beautiful morning to meet up with our friends in Waitrose and, as usual, had a jolly chat with two of our friends. I took the opportunity to buy some heavily discounted Little Gem lettuce that I needed for our lunch and also bought some Cavolo Nero which is that wonderfully nutty and non-bitter form of dark kale which has been especially bred and has made kale taste delicious. When the care workers called around, one of them intimated that her next task along was to cook a salmon fillet for the person for whom she was a care worker. As it happened, we were due to have some sea bass for lunch and so we discussed the best way for the fish to be cooked. Our domestic help showed us a wonderful method for cooking fresh sea bass (which I had bought from the supermarket when I last went shopping) and we have followed this ever since. Basically the fish is washed and dried in kitchen paper, and then has a quick smearing of olive oil, a squirt of lemon juice and just a soupcon of salt. Then we fry it in a special grill pan that we have that is manufactured with ridges which keeps the fish from sticking too much to the bottom of the pan and cook it for three minutes on one side and then two minutes on the other. It is served quickly on a bed of lettuce and then eaten quickly before it cools. Prepared this way, the fish is absolutely delicious and its delicate flavour is enhanced and so we really enjoyed our lunch time meal which, believe it or not, feels one quite filled and satisfied. This afternoon, as we often do, we settled down to watch a programme which had been broadcast the night before. The programme for this afternoon was on Channel 5 and was ‘1984: The most shocking moments’ This programme is evidently compiled with a lot of BBC archive film and two things really stood out for me. The first of these was the scathing and delightful ‘Spitting Image’ which parodied politicians and particularly Margaret Thatcher ruthlessly. Margaret Thatcher’s image was voiced by a male actor who managed to get her intonations with a great deal of accuracy – one of her cabinet, Edwina Currie, revealed that she was certain that Margaret Thatcher watched the programme and afterwards actually became more like her Spitting Image persona with a deeper voice and portrayed as wearing male clothes. The makers of Spitting Image contemplated making John major look slightly less grey and boring by inventing an affair with a contemporary female politician. They considered Edwina Currie but eventually chose Virginia Bottomley but the shocking truth that was revealed a few years later in Edwina’s Currie autobiography that she did have an affair with John Major and they actually engaged in sex on the desk that he had in his room in the House of Commons. When the cartoonists learnt of this, they portrayed John Major as an up-to-date Superman but wearing his underpants outside his trousers. The whole extra marital affair helped make John Major’s reputation to recover from a bold and unadventurous politician to somebody much more dynamic – incidentally, the same thing happened to Paddy Ashdown the Liberal Party leader who the cartoonists promptly labelled as ‘Paddy Pantsdown’ Naturally, the program on 1984 included the horrific events of the miner’s dispute and their eventual confrontation with the massed ranks of police, some of them mounted, at the now infamous Orgreave coal coking plant. There were many other memorable shocking moments of 1984. One of them was the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher and the whole of her cabinet in the IRA bombing of their conference hotel in Brighton, not to mention the death on stage of the comedian Tommy Cooper (shown live on ITV) Tommy Cooper just appeared to crumple and the audience cheered thinking it was part of his act but he had in fact died. Finally, we have the appearance of Madonna who in a show sang her iconic ‘Just like a Virgin’ but dressed like a bride which outfit she discarded in stages and with a series of gyrations that completely belied the title of the song.

The quote ‘Tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth’ is often attributed to various historical figures, including Lenin, Hitler, and Goebbels. But this is now receiving a new twist with respect to the forthcoming USA presidential election where it appears that most voters now believe the Trump lie that the last election was fraudulently won by the Democrats. Only 57% of Trump supporters said they believe this November’s elections will be run and administered somewhat or very well, according to polling of registered voters that the Pew Research Center released on Thursday — compared to 90% of Harris supporters. Forty-two percent of Trump supporters believed the elections would be run ‘not too well’ or ‘not at all well.’ Both groups had high confidence in election administrators in 2018, Pew’s historical data shows, but a dramatic split between the Democratic and Republican candidate supporters developed in 2020 and has only grown wider since. There was a similar split in confidence that mail-in and absentee ballots will be counted as voters intended, with 85% of Harris supporters confident the counts will be accurate compared to 38% of Trump supporters. Voters were also split, though less dramatically, on how confident they were that in-person votes will be counted accurately, that state election officials and local poll workers will do a good job and that U.S. election systems are secure against cyberattacks

Yesterday, I was stuck on the end of my iPhone with one of those things which is increasingly both common, and irritating, these days. I recently upgraded my EE account for my iPhone and was informed that my bills would be about the same as BT (with whom I had an account) and which had taken over EE. As part of migrating to my new account, I was asked whether I wanted to accept a TV package but declined this, only to be told ‘Well, it is free and part of the package’ Now a coupe of weeks later, I discovered that I have been sent an Apple TV package that I neither actually want or need and, to boot, I am being charged £18.00 a month for this. As soon as I received notification of my latest bill, I got onto the phone to EE only to be informed that there is a wait of 30 minutes during which time I have to listen to some inane pop song but feel that I dared not hang up as the issue has got to be resolved eventually. I am going to have to ask them to listen back to their own recordings when I am convinced that they told me that this service was ‘free’ but I suspect this is a traditional sleight of hand in which companies say a service is ‘free’ by which they mean they are going to charge you for it eventually. The frustrating part of this episode, with which we are all familiar, is that if one wishes to buy a product por service one gets connected within seconds whereas if you want to query a bill or request a refund, it is made as difficult as possible. Our domestic calls around on Fridays these days and her husband was experiencing an episode similar to mine where he was trying to disentangle his BT and Sky accounts and this, too, was taking hours and hours on the phone to attempt to resolve. After having been on the phone for nearly one hour and a half, I am pleased to say that the problem was resolved more or less to my satisfaction but it took an EE worker with a Scottish accent (in Scotland?), working remotely from home who had to consult with the recordings of the original transaction, at least three consultations with a manager, a ‘threat’ that if I had changed my mind I would be responsible for a cancellation fee of £300 and goodness what else besides before the matter was resolved to my satisfaction. What had complicated the situation was that in the course of the conversation with the original EE salesperson, I was offered a package, then a special ‘rebate’ and goodness knows what else besides until I was forced to mention the Small Claims Court and we talked our way, at length, to a resolution of the problem. In the meanwhile, most of our morning was wasted in this venture so in the very late morning, I wheeled Meg down the hill, picked up a copy of our newspaper and then wheeled her back before pressing on with a quick lunch of a curry I had thrown together. Just to compound these irritations, I have received a text from the care agency saying they are short staffed and so I could I manage with one carer for Meg’s lunch time and tea time calls today – this is happening more and more frequently these days and although I certainly do not mind helping out as and when I can to help resolve problems, this occurrence is getting all too frequent these days. After lunch, Meg and I treated ourselves to watching a catch up of last night’s ‘Question Time’ but after the traumas of the morning, I seem to have slept through most of it. This afternoon, Meg and I felt in the mood for something a little different and it was anyway a very wet and dreary afternoon. We wondered if there was a good Thomas Hardy film on YouTube but the film quality of one or two of our choices was a bit ‘iffy’ so we settled on one with Spanish subtitles. This we quite enjoyed until the whole of YouTube froze (which it does tend to do) so we had a cup of tea and chose to watch Verdi’s Rigoletto instead.

Sky News is reporting tonight on one of the worst cases of ‘catfishing’ This term refers to the creation of a fictitious online persona, or fake identity, with the intent of deception, usually to mislead a victim into an online romantic relationship. An online predator who led an American girl and her father to take their own lives has been jailed for at least 20 years after the UK’s largest ‘catfishing’ case. Alexander McCartney previously admitted 185 charges, including the manslaughter of a girl who took her own life. Police called him a ‘dangerous, relentless, cruel paedophile’ who ‘may as well have pulled the trigger himself’ and said there were about 3,500 victims. Devices seized from his bedroom contained hundreds of thousands of indecent photographs and videos of underage girls. Belfast Crown Court heard victims were aged between 10 and 16 and based in the UK, USA, continental Europe, Australia and New Zealand. McCartney, from South Armagh in Northern Ireland, used Snapchat and other sites to pose as someone else online, known as catfishing. He pretended to be a young girl to persuade his victims to send images. He then blackmailed them into sending more explicit material. Sky News is reporting tonight that these offences took place when the internet could be compared with the ‘Wild West’ and deception on this scale would not be possible today. However, it is a very powerful reminder of why we need an ‘Online Safety Act’ but one always wonders whether the law lags quite a long way behind the actual practices on the internet and it must be continue to be an incredibly dangerous terrain for the unwary. Having said that and from admittedly male perspective, I am rather at a loss to understand why anyone, and particularly a teenage girl, would willing take and then send explicit sexual images of themselves. This particular miscreant has been jailed for life, whatever that actually means in this case, but the scale of the offences is mind boggling. Apparently the abuse started the minute the explicit photo was received and an already pre-prepared type of ransom demand was immediately cut and pasted to the victim’s phone or laptop.

We approached today with a certain degree of apprehension because last Thursday, our normal shopping day, Meg experienced a period of agitation once I was out of the house. Today started off in a little harum-scarum way because we got a text to say that one of the allocated care workers had been delayed by a puncture and could I assist the remaining one of the pair. As it happens, I get on well with the young Psychology graduate who has a very cheery disposition so, not for the first time, I acted as ‘Helper No. 2’ I received a phone call from the health care agency changing the care worker allocated for Meg’s sit but by the time she was due a third worker had been allocated and she turned up once her children had been dropped off at school. Meg was OK today with this carer, I am glad to say and I got my shopping done and unpacked as per usual, even though this takes up most of the morning. The care worker and I chatted whilst I put the shopping away and then organised some lunch which was a quiche supplemented by a tin of tomatoes enhanced with various herbs. Then we eventually settled down in the afternoon to shock and horrify ourselves with a programme first shown in the evening before detailing how Trump attempted to ‘steal’ the last presidential election. The focus of the programme were the proceedings conducted in the state of Georgia where Trump made a telephone call,recorded at the time, when Trump cajoled the official in charge of the elections to ‘find’ him 11,000 votes so that he could claim the state. Eventually Trump was indicted i.e. charged in the Georgia court system but an appeal against the character of the prosecutor went as far as the Supreme Court who, helpfully for Trump but unsurprisingly, delayed proceedings until after November 5th. No doubt in a few days time we shall see all kinds of shenanigans (what a delightful Irish word!) to contest results and gain electoral advantage. There is a lot of what I would call ‘throwing sand in the eyes of the opponent’ and I suspect that this practice probably dates from the times of gladiatorial combat. If one is on the ground, potentially defeated and weaponless, then the only desperate hope that you have is to grab a handful of sand and throw it in the eyes of the opponent in order to gain a few seconds of advantage. To carry on with the analysis of Georgia, the BBC correspondent is now reporting that Georgia may represent ‘Ground Zero’ for the Republicans as the Georgian court system is already full of actual, not to say potential cases, concerned with the 2020 election. In recent days a Georgia judge has rejected as ‘illegal, unconstitutional, and invalid’ an attempt by Republicans to enforce new practices in the election process. They included the hand-counting of votes and the right to examine any election-related documentation ‘prior to the certification of results’. Opponents said the documents could have involved anything from training manuals to poll watcher credentials – they dismissed the legal action as a spurious effort to undermine faith in the legitimacy of election results.

There was a story which broke yesterday that nightclubs are going broke at a very great rate. New research by the Night Time Industries Association shows that in the past four years the UK has lost 37% of its clubs, which works out at about 10 clubs closing each month. I must confess to being a bit curmudgeonly but this news does not trouble me at all. I always associate nightclubs with a certain degree of drug taking and other unsavoury happenings. When Meg and I lived in Leicester which was admittedly a long time ago now as we left Leicester in 1997, there was a large night club in the centre of town next to the bus station and when the nightclub closed each morning there were frequent disputes and altercations (normally over girls) and the rates of stabbings averaged out at one per week. The person who acted as Meg’s assistant as a placement tutor had a husband who was a paramedic. He was regularly assaulted by club members whilst he was attending to the injuries which were occasioned by the night club clientele. So I, for one, would not miss this scene at all. I gleaned the opinions of some of the younger care workers when they arrived to attend to Meg but there was not an ardent clubber among them, so none of them were particularly enamoured of the club scene. In fact the younger female workers told me that they had to be assiduous in avoiding getting their drinks spiked with the so-called ‘date-rape’ drugs which only added to my apprehension about this particular part of our economy. I appreciate that there is quite an ecology of other commercial activities that might be spin offs from the night time trade such as fast food outlets and taxis which must do a lot of business but the fact remains that after several years of austerity, the young do not have the spending power that they did and perhaps take their pleasures elsewhere.

It looks as though Kemi Badenoch is now the odds-on favourite to become the next Tory Leader. Amazingly, she made two terrible gaffes at the Tory party conference (saying maternity pay was excessive and that 10% of civil servants should be in gaol) but she somewhere escaped undue strictures, probably because she is on the right of the Tory party and admired by the party faithful.There was a TV debate on I think GB News between the two Tory party contenders and it looks as though Kemi Badenoch won this hands down whilst her opponent, Robert Jenwick, seemed to display nervousness and tried to relate everything back to immigration. But I think she is fairly quick witted and can think well on her feet which may make her look a lot more dynamic than Keir Starmer who can appear wooden at times. Tories, though, are not really used to being in opposition as they have been in power for so long so how good an opposition leader she will prove to be is an interesting question. She has the reputation of being extremely combative so I can imagine that there may be some quite ‘sparky’ performances at PMQ (Prime Minister’s Question Time) when she has a chance to confront Keir Starmer across the dispatch box (but faced with a huge phalanx of Labour MPs in front of her and only 120 Tory MP’s behind her)

Yesterday, being a relatively free day and in plenty of time. we made our way down to ‘The Lemon Tree’ cafe in town, stopping en route to get some cash out of an ATM which is yet another reason for making an occasional excursion along the High Street. After our mug of tea and the treat in which we indulge in a bacon butty, we wondered what other delights the High Street had to offer.For the first time in quite some weeks we had a quick whizz around the Cancer Relief charity shop which I always reckoned used to be a slight cut above the others. But we did espy a couple of bargains so I bought Meg a new cardigan (decorated with sheep along the front) to complement the other two that she wears regularly – we shall have to wait until tomorrow morning to see if it fits OK. I also bought another quite deep cooking pot which I could not believe was being sold for only a couple of pounds so I will put this use with some roasted vegetables and some mince that I might do in the oven in the morning. We passed by two sets of friends on the way down but did not have the chance to stop and chat as there was other traffic in the road which we were in anger of holding up. Once we had returned home, we lunched on kippers done in the oven after being wrapped in tinfoil, baked potato and some broccoli. In truth, the dinner turned out to be huge and both Meg and I struggled to finish it. After lunch, we were blessed with a spell of fine weather and did manage to get the back lawn cut. Like the lawns in the font of the house, this was badly needed and I was relieved to get it done fairly expeditiously. This week’s cut of the lawns will be the penultimate of the season as I hope to make the final cut in about 10 days time- I generally aim for the final cut of the year about Bonfire Night time. AFter the last cut, the mower needs to be drained of petrol and oil ready for the winter sojourn until I start again on or about March 25th next year.

Every so often, one hears a story that really engages one’s attention and so it proved the other day. A BBC reporter had visited Michigan in which there are a couple of towns with high Arabic populations, the workers having come from Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East to work primarily in the car factories. At first sight, given the support that the USA is giving to Israel, one would have thought that these towns would have naturally gravitated towards the Democrats but actually the reverse is the case and the Arab populations seem to be firmly swinging behind Trump. Trump narrowly took the state of Michigan eight years ago and the Democrats equally narrowly four years ago. But it seems that the reporter might have highlighted a massive problem for the Democrats in this crucial state. The social scientists amongst us might snort and dismiss this one account as a piece of journalistic fantasy and hence ‘one swallow does not a summer make’ On the other hand, sometimes a good journalist might get the kernel of an interesting story to be reflected in the opinion polls. At the Sahara Restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, four Arabic language TV news channels are beaming in images of the war in Gaza and the aftermath of the recent pager and radio devices explosions in Lebanon. The smell of cardamom-infused coffee and shawarma and falafel, and hum of friends catching up, stand in stark contrast to the images on the television screens. Dearborn is the first Arab-majority city in the US, and it has served as a key centre for the ‘uncommitted’ movement that is opposed to the Biden administration’s policy toward the Middle East. Because they are in Michigan – a key Midwestern swing state that Joe Biden won by fewer than three points in 2020 – Dearborn voters, like those who frequent the Sahara Restaurant, could decide Kamala Harris’s political future. What I found especially chilling was one female voter who explained to the reporter that she loathed every one of Trumps’s policies and could not abide him as a candidate. Nonetheless, she hated what she regarded as the genocide of the Lebanese people even more and she especially blamed Harris for this – and hence was going to vote for Trump. One can put this story together with other fragmentary bits of electoral news such as the fact that the Democrats are losing support amongst the young black and Hispanic males and Trump is the beneficiary. For his part, Trump has bragged that if he were President, the war in the Middle east would. not have started in the first place and even the Ukraine conflict he argues will be settled in a day. Over here in Europe, we might throw up our hands in horror at what might seem to be the political naivety of some of the American voting population but I am increasingly of the view that the election is already lost and the Trump camp, by hook or by crook aided with last minute swings, a lot of recent hot money, an army of lawyers standing by to contest results and a sympathetic bevy of Republican administrators in key positions within the electoral machine will actually manage to get Trump over the line in this election. The Trump legal team are making great play of the fact that the volunteers for Kamala Harris, encouraged by the UK Labour Party, is actually breaking US electoral law as ‘foreign interference’ in a US election. As the practicer of volunteering is quite common on both sides of the Atlantic and both parties, this is generally regarded in the British media as just a Trump ploy to distract attention from more serious issues. But given that Trump has an army of lawyers effectively twiddling their thumbs until Election Night itself, I suppose that complaining against the Labour Party gives them something to do in the meantime. This could have slightly more serious consequences were Trump (as I now think is quite likely) as it means that the whole of much vaunted ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the USA might be put into jeopardy.

The carers turned up a little late today and with a change in personnel but as the senior carer was the manager who puts himself on shift every now and again, I did not really mind. This morning proved to be an interesting one. It was the most beautiful day and we enjoyed the walk down into town through the autumn sunshine. As soon as we saw our friends, we were delighted to learn that it was the birthday of one of them and she treated us to some birthday cake which, by now, has become a tradition between us of one of the Waitrose chocolate offerings. I suddenly felt a pang of remorse at not having bought a birthday card for our friend so I shot off to another part of the store to buy a suitable offering. The one I chose is a traditional one for people of a certain age (like all of us) and was the visual joke of a couple of cows chatting in one field but one of them was displaying the hindquarters of a zebra and was saying to her companion ‘I am not completely sure about that recent hip operation’ Whilst chatting between us, I asked one of our friends whether she took her porridge pats and grind them a little smaller in a blender/grinder in order to make them simulate the finer packets of porridge oats that are sold in sachets for instant heating in the microwave. Our friend informed us that she did this regularly so I promptly went and bought a new supply of oats only to discover that the Waitrose ‘Basic’ version of oats was less than half the price of a neighbouring branded alternative. So when I got home, I located our Braun blender/grinder which I have not used for some time but will wait until Meg is asleep tonight and I will try some experimentation. I did try some in a pestle and mortar the other day but I am sure that there must be an easier and faster way of producing finer milled oats which will fit the breakfast bill. It is easy enough for us to add our own squirt of honey and so this has breakfast sorted out being the nutritional recommendation of some slow release carbohydrate to set oneself for the morning. On our way out of the store, we were presented with a beautiful bunch of roses which the relevant ‘partners’ put in our direction rather than throwing them away when they are past their sell-by date but they are always gratefully received. On our way up the hill, we noticed that a South African Asian lady that we know and have around for tea on one occasion was in the process of selling her house. We had not had the opportunity to have a chat for about a year now but she was in the process of moving to Droitwich, the Worcestershire town which is just down the road, as it were, and which we used to visit regularly when Meg could get into our car. We exchanged the news of what had happened to us in our respective lives before we each went on our way. Later in the morning, we entertained the carer who was coming for Meg’s Tuesday ‘sit’ with a view of the video we had made of Meg giving a 50th anniversary wedding speech some seven years ago now and other reminiscencies of our student life in the 1960’s. Then we made ourselves a quick lunch of a tin of chicken on some microwavable rice and petit pois which is one of those meals that one cam throw together in 5-10 minutes when the need arises. After lunch, it looked as though we were going to have a fine afternoon so we seized the opportunity whilst the weather was fair to get the front lawn cut. This will be the penultimate cut of the year and was certainly badly needed -I was amazed at how much the grass had grown in the last ten days.

One particular news item has caught my attention. This relates to the shooting dead of a young black man about two years ago and where the police marksman was charged with murder. The Crown Prosecution Service must have been convinced that there was a reasonable case to answer, not least because the car was travelling backwards away from the police marksman at the time of the shooting. When the verdict of ‘not guilty’ was announced, I was quite surprised given the details of the case that had been released. Members of the black community and some Labour MPs were going to demonstrate outside the Old Bailey later in the evening. However, there have been developments as the day has developed. Details have been released of evidence that the young black man killed by a police marksman was himself a gang member, had entered a night club recently in order to shoot presumably a member of a rival gang and himself had evidence of having recently fired on a gun on his own clothing. The issues that are raised are these. It appears that when the marksman fired the shot, he did not realise that in front of him was a member of a criminal gang but was justice actually served? The question remains whether the police did realise what was going on because the car that was used was also under suspicion as having been part of another criminal venture so in this very tangled story, do we have a case that the police did act too hastily in the original shooting and were then vindicated because, by their own account, it was a happy accident that they had actually got their man? This is a very tangled and confusing story but the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service itself took the decision to prosecute a serving police marksman must mean that they had considerable suspicions about the events and motivations of the whole case. Of course, we shall never get to the bottom of this. The details released today indicate that Chris Kaba was a core member of a notorious south London gang and accused of being the gunman in an alleged bid to murder a rival in a nightclub shooting days before he was killed. The 24-year-old’s gang links, previous convictions and violent past can be reported for the first time after Metropolitan Police marksman Martyn Blake was cleared of murder and the judge Mr Justice Goss lifted reporting restrictions.

Yesterday, before I came to bed, I decided to reinstall a banking app on my new iPhone – they had warned me in the EE shop that I would need to reinstall this app because as a security option, it would not transfer from the old phone to the new. This turned out to be quite a long and complicated procedure and involved taking photos of my driving license front and back, making a video image, speaking some numbers to get a voice sample and so on. But eventually, I got the app to install on my new iphone and can now view some banking information via the app. I was delayed getting to bed last night because when I had installed our new TV a year ago, I had used a facility to access the web and had constructed a link that allows a viewing of the videos (i.e. speeches) made on the occasion of our 50th wedding anniversary celebrations. The video clip I was particularly interested in viewing was a completely improvised speech that Meg made off the cuff and unscripted some seven years ago now and as her illness started not a great deal later, it was interesting to access this for the record. Later on in the day and after lunch, I showed these videos to Meg and I think that she remembered making the speech all of those years ago now. It was a rather gloomy day today and we found ourselves a little short of time because the care workers came a little bit later this morning. So we confined ourselves to going down into town, picking up the newspaper and then wandering along the High Street to eventually visit the AgeUK shop where we had a quick browse around without making a purchase. Then we made it up the hill in time for the scheduled carer who, as it happened, did not arrive but another worker turned up half an hour later. As I had previously rummaged around in our freezer for something or other, I found some parsnips that I thought we could well eat up and I popped these in the oven and made a meal with some petit pois and some of the beef that was cooked yesterday.

The government have instituted an NHS public consultation exercise in which it is hoping to glean the views of the public, NHS staff and any other interested parties. But is already being admitted that any real changes in the NHS might not come into effect until next April. But Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, made some interesting observations today.’I suppose you could say, well, you should just come in and impose your view of change…I would just say to people, be careful what you wish for…The last time a new health secretary came in after a general election where their party won power, that was Andrew Lansley….The Conservatives after 2010, who came down with a massive top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for, nobody wanted, cost billions and set the NHS up to fail.’ This is all relevant information but one can already say ahead of consultation what it is that most people would prefer. The single biggest complaint must be the difficulty in getting through and making a GP appointment and this is probably followed by the length of time that is taken for a treatment to start or a hospital procedure to be undertaken. So probably the biggest reforms that could be instituted would be to say a GP who one knew well and who could ensure a good continuity of care – one might almost say the reinvention of the principle of a family doctor. I seem to remember a research report that indicated, probably on the back of some international evidence, that patients who had a long term relationship with one GP tended, other things being equal, to suffer less illness taken in the round and to live longer. Perhaps a model could be tried where two GPs and a physician associate formed a little ‘pod’ who were solely responsible for a group of patients. Another government ambition is to do something about patient records so that they are more accessible and are more transferable to other interested parties such as hospitals. But there is a big problem in just assuming that you throw an app on a smart phone to many of the elderly and the elderly elderly who do not have the digital skills enjoyed by younger generations. There may be solution to this problem, at least in part. I noticed an advert in ‘The Times‘ for a very simple phone (made by Samsung) designed with the older generation in mind (big buttons, a few large icons and the like) Is there a case for an NHS ‘access phone’ that is sufficiently simple for many of the older generation to be able to employ?

Harris currently leads in swing states worth 36 electoral college votes, vs 27 for Trump, with states worth 31 effectively tied. There are less than two weeks to go until election day but even then, we might have to wait for a result for weeks more. I heard an interview with a Professor of Politics from Birmingham University who was explaining that already the Trump camp has an army of lawyers ready to pounce upon the slightest morsel that would enable to challenge a tight result that does not go their way. The postal votes have to be counted and there are probably some overseas votes to be counted as well. A clear cut victory for either side looks incredibly unlikely and one wonders what chance event might occur in the next few days to nudge undecided voters in one direction or another. But all of the major opinion polls seem to point in the same direction i.e. that an already close race is getting closer and closer. I still have the feeling that Trump will claim (and perhaps even gain) victory even if he is very marginally behind and, of course, he has a veritable army of supporters who will come to claim victory of the result is very close. Bill Clinton used a remark to clarify what was uppermost in voters’ minds with his famous phrase ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ and that is even more true now. The absence of authoritative national media in the US (but a plurality of news outlets, not to mention pollsters) plays into the hands of the Trump camp because they seem to have successfully implanted the notion that the economy fared worse under Biden than Trump. The most basic measure of the economy is how much it grows. The official data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) are clear: After inflation, real GDP has grown at a 3.4 average annual rate since Biden became president, while Trump trails badly at an average 1.8 percent growth. But perception is everything and in this case, the public perception is that Trump outperformed Biden (although that is not the case)

Yesterday, Sunday, proved to be quite an interesting day. Meg and I got up after a fairly good night’s sleep and the care workers arrived promptly at 8.00am to get Meg up, washed and dressed. We tend to watch the Politics programmes on a Sunday morning but as I am traipsing to and fro from the kitchen preparing our porridge and toast for breakfast, I often only see the program in brief snatches and such was the case today. However, the evening before I had put our recently purchased beef joint into our new cooking pot and doused it well with some ‘old’ red wine that had been open for a week or so. This I supplemented with some onion gravy and then popped the whole into the oven to cook whilst we went out for the morning. After breakfast, we received a visit from our Eucharistic minister who we have not seen for a week or so now and after she had departed, we were delighted to get a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend. We were delighted to accept his invitation for a coffee down in Waitrose and actually spent an hour and a half in each other’s company which we found mutually enjoyable. We ruminated on the fact that we both enjoy a good argument by which I do mean a disputatious disagreement but rather an exploration of the extent to which you come to a position on the issues of the day by exploring each other’s point of view. Today, for example, we were exploring what we both felt about the ‘Assisted Dying’ bill recently presented to Parliament and we were exploring how we both felt about this issue. After exploring this issue between us, I feel slightly less in favour than perhaps I was some time ago but will feel assuaged, in fact, if the hospice movement receives full and proper funding so that no one should die in extreme pain or discomfort if the end of life is properly managed for them. So then we returned home in time for the late morning carers (who were themselves half an hour late) and then started to think about lunch. Fortunately the beef was not too over cooked as it was cooked with plenty of wine and gravy but then I cheated a little, as time was pressing, and used some of the supplies of microwaved vegetables that cook in about three minutes. I was mightily relieved to discover that the new Denby cooking pot which I purchased in the last week and pressed into service this morning actually cleaned up pretty easily despite having been in the oven for the best part of three hours. After lunch, I had two programs lined up for us to watch in the afternoon. One of these was the rugby match between Leicester Tigers and Gloucester and we watched about twenty minutes or so of this witnessing Gloucester making a flying start. Then we turned to a program broadcast on Channel 4 the previous evening and one that I particularly wanted Meg and I to watch together. It was called ‘Churchill: Britain’s Secret Apartheid’ and we both found it a fascinating watch. It revealed what might be called a hidden part of Britain’s history. During WW2 after the USA entered the war, some 100,000 black troops were sent to Britain outnumbering the local black population about 12:1. The documentary revealed that the Americans wanted to enforce the strict segregation between the white and black troops and also revealed that the black troops were used as ancillary staff (cooks, labourers and so on) in support of the white troops who would be engaged in the eventual fighting. But the Americans attempted to enforce a type of apartheid (with which Churchill felt he had to comply as Britain needed American manpower, firepower and money) The programme revealed how open hostilities broke out between the white and black soldiers with the local indigenous English population taking the sides of the black soldiers against the white. The mood amongst the English locals was that they grateful for the Americans coming to our assistance whatever their skin colour but had no appetite for ‘de facto’ American style apartheid, enforced by the (white) military police. Open battles lasting for hours took place both in Tiger May (Cardiff), Bamber Bridge in Lancashire and the streets of Leicester. It may come as no surprise to learn that several black soldiers (but not a single white soldier) were charged by the military police with a range of offences including several deaths. All of this is available in official records if one knows where to look and full credit to Channel 4 by making a documentary as shocking as this.

The long anticipated Budget is due to be delivered in about 10 days time and, apparently, there is an unusual amount of behind the scenes tussle as ministers desperately try to defend their departments against Budget cuts whatever the official line of the government. On this occasion, the negotiations between the Treasury and individual ministers is quite intense and there is a report today that if there is the predicted rise in the National Insurance contributions paid by employers rather than employees this could bankrupt the care home sector. This may or not be the case and to the outside observer, it is hard to discern how much is the normal sabre rattling and how much is a dire warning of the actual consequences of budget decisions. The newly appointed ministers have a pretty terrible time during these pre-budget discussions as the senior civil servants who actually run the department will judge how capable is the minister nominally in charge of the department according to how well they have done in the Budget negotiations. Normally the Treasury which is an old hand at these pre-budget negotiations and representations will get its way but then ministers are bound by collective responsibility even if they have lost out. As an example of pure political naivety, the junior minister who was holding the ‘Grenfell fire disaster’ brief has been forced to step down because she rather stupidly attended a conference in which one of the major sponsors was a firm heavily criticised in the enquiry and the minister, by her attendance, looked as though she was actually endorsing the actions of the firm. The Grenfell survivors, through their representatives, let their displeasure be known to the right quarters after which Rushanara Ali, the minister concerned, was stripped of her brief.

Yesterday, Saturday, I was just on the point of going to bed when my iPhone sprang into life with a FaceTime call from my sister in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. She had left hospital on Thursday afternoon and so had spent the best part of a couple of days in her new surroundings in a residential home. So far, the facilities and the care staff seem to be excellent although my sister had a somewhat rocky start to her stay when the care staff were not sure how they could her comfortable when she is lying in bed and when the pain intensifies. In addition, my sister encountered a ‘Server error’ when trying to access this blog and so she wondered what was going on. We had a fairly lengthy conversation and, of course, she is in her own room and not on a public ward and so we could chat. I suspect that my sister could do with both a specialised hospital bed (which alters its shape) and perhaps also a specialised mattress so I encouraged her to push for this to be provided for her. I also gave some alternative links to the website of the blog because it may be something to do with the permissions surrounding the domain names rather than the actual server or the website itself. I have managed to get it to work OK and have sent my sister some links that ought to help. In the meanwhile, I was also encouraging her (and the rest of the family) to invest an up-to-date smart TV (perhaps, as we have done a brand-new TV but a lot cheaper because it is the model of one or two years ago) plus a YouTube subscription. Meg and I watch a film or a concert on YouTube and life without it would actually be unimaginable. When the carers called around this morning, one of them was a young girl who had gone off to university but just returned to do one or two ‘bank’ sessions at the weekend. She was suffering from what she called ‘Freshers’ flu’ where youngsters at university exchange rampant viruses with each other so to alleviate her symptoms I gave her a Lemsip which we always have in our kitchen drawer ready for the autumn and winter colds strike. As normal, we walked down into town and had a fairly lively conversation, at one stage laughing so much that the staff from the store wanted to join in. The story of mine that occasioned the laughter was my account of the elderly German tourists we used to see on the beaches of La Coruna in Northern Spain. After more than half a century of bathing topless, their skin looked brown and leathery and I explained that upon viewing them afar, it was akin to seeing a group of old ladies with leather handbags swinging on their chests. Then upon our return home I received a phone call to enquire whether I could assist the one carer in a late morning call to which I agreed readily. The care manager has let me download an app which means that I can read live all of the comments that the carers make on each visit but the app does not, at this stage, give me access to the visit schedules for the day ahead which would be very useful in our case. Last night, Meg was 90% asleep because the ‘put to bed’ call was delayed by an hour and an almost asleep person is so much harder to get undressed, washed and put to bed. This afternoon proved to be rather frustrating. At one stage, the weather looked fair and I thought I would seize the opportunity of giving the front lawn their penultimate cut of the season. But then it clouded over and I thought I had better wait until the threat of a shower had passed. Then the weather brightened up again, Meg started to have one of her agitated spells so my original plan was thwarted as I thought I could not even leave her alone outside in her agitated state whilst I was cutting the grass. So I stayed indoors and did my best to calm her down with an old-fashioned antihistamine a doctor had prescribed on one occasion and which he thought might help to ease spells of agitation in the afternoon. I covered Meg with a fairly large double blanket and put on a Mozart Piano Concerto available to us on YouTube and this worked to a small extent – the lawns, though, remain uncut. I am hopeful that the weather stays bright and relatively warm for a day or so that I can seize whatever grass cutting opportunities present themselves.

Sky News is reporting that Donald Trump has finally outdone himself. His rhetoric has long been extreme but, in campaign remarks as it heads towards a close, it’s more so. Asked about ‘bureaucrats undermining you’ in a second term, he replied: ‘We have two enemies: we have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries….We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary by the military.’ Critics have interpreted the remarks as a threat to use the military against political opponents, even though he would need to be president to try. They accuse Trump of shaping an authoritarian agenda – true, they say, because it is laid out in his own words. To the committed Trump supporters, of course, this is music to their ears and demonstrates why they feel that Trump is the new Messiah who has come to save them from the so-called ‘liberal’ establishment. But how this plays out with the uncommitted ‘middle of the road’ voters in the swing states is, of course, the critical question. Conventional political wisdom is that politicians should moderate their stances in order to try to capture the middle ground. But many observers have commented upon the fact that Trump does not play the political game by the conventional rules – and to some is not regarded as a politician at all. There is an alternative and rather frightening narrative that Trump is attempting to force the middle ground to ultimately back him and hence for the ‘middle ground’ to break into opposing camps with the calculation that there will be more who are persuaded by him than repulsed by him. But if the rhetoric is to be believed, then a Trump presidency may result in mass military action against his own population but would the military obey? In case we think that such madness is confined to the other side of the Atlantic, our own Kemi Badenoch in her Tory leadership campaign suggested that up to 10% of civil servants should be imprisoned for being enemies of the state and thwarting the desires of a future Conservative government.

Yesterday dawned as a fine bright day but the day did not get off to the best of starts. The care agency that looks after Meg sent me a text indicating that the call this morning would at 8.30 and then be cut down to 30 mins. So I got up rather more slowly this morning only to be greeted by two care workers at about 8.10 saying that their rota had been altered yet again. So I had to do a certain amount of running around in my pyjamas which was not the best start to the day. However, as Friday is now the day that our domestic help calls around and we always look forward to seeing her again this morning and to exchange news – she helps to keep Meg on an even keel in the mornings as she goes about her tasks. She was inducted into the translation of our Harry Potter blanket with the Latin slogan and then I showed her the cotton weave blanket, John Lewis quality, which I had previously washed and had airing in our airing cupboard. Our domestic help managed to find a very similar article using the John Lewis website where it sold for over £60 so we were pleased to get one for less than £5 and she indicated that if she had seen it in our local favourite AgeUK suburban outlet, she would have bought it herself. After we had had our coffee with our University of Birmingham friend down the hill, we just about got back in time for the late morning carers and then after they had completed their visit, we started to think about our lunch. I decided to make some risotto again this morning using a recipe which I know works very well (starting with some fried onions, then adding the arborio rice for a minute to fry, then adding the chicken stock, one half of the mackerel fillets and finally topped up with a good dollop of yoghurt and some grated cheese) We made enough for our domestic help to take some risotto home for herself and her husband and Meg and I really enjoyed the meal that we had this lunchtime. In the afternoon, I started to prepare for a long and protracted telephone call with EE to query my bill and to demand the removal of a service which they had inserted which I did not want or need and certainly did not wish to be charged for. But when I was preparing for my telephone call with EE, I consulted the latest bill to find it was at about normal levels and the next bill showed me as about 38p in credit rather than the large amount that they were threatening to take. Quite frankly, it was difficult to ascertain exactly what was going on but it could be that when I bought the new phone over two weeks ago, a bill was prepared which was then amended in the light of the comments I made to the EE staff in the shop at the time but might have taken several days to work their way through the system. To resolve this issue, I am going to wait until Meg is sound asleep this evening and then spend some time going through my accounts to see exactly for what I have been charged over the last week or so. In the meantime, I have another issue that the EE staff might be able to resolve in that the old SIM was transferred to my new phone and a new TescoMobile PAYG SIM inserted into my old phone, only to discover that when I receive a call, I seem to get it on the ‘new’ and the ‘old#’ phone simultaneously even though the numbers are evidently different. However, one of tech savvy care staff who also has an iPhone managed to solve the problem for me (which involved the tweak of some settings as I suspected).After breakfast, we got a call from our University of Birmingham friend and were absolutely delighted to see him in Waitrose as we often do on a Friday.

The recent assassination of the Hamas leader by the Israelis (which by all accounts was a sheer stroke of luck as a routine Israeli parol ran across some victims of a recent a strike) has led to much tougher language from the UK and other European governments. Keir Starmer has said: ‘What is needed now is a ceasefire in Gaza, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, immediate access to humanitarian aid and return to the path towards the two-state solution. That is the only way to deliver long term peace and security; the humanitarian situation cannot continue. And I say once again to Israel, the world will not tolerate any more excuses on humanitarian assistance. Civilians in northern Gaza need food now.’ To use a phrase such as ‘will not tolerate any more excuses’ indicates a degree of exasperation with the Israeli leadership which is almost unprecedented for a staunch ally. This sentiment is probably shared in the USA as well but, of course, the contenders for the presidency dare not say anything that seems to indicate that the USA tolerance for the Israeli prosecution of the war is decreasing. Biden went as far as he dare giving the Israelis some 30 days to open up more supply routes of aid and medical supplies into the stricken areas. But this only seems like a slap on the wrist and, in any case, a period of thirty days covers the period both before and after the American presidential elections. The very stark truth is that far from being a complete client state of the USA, the Israelis are ‘de fact’ being given a free hand to pursue whatever policies they desire. It is now self evident to most commentators that the most right wing government that Israel has ever known will tolerate nothing else except what they define as the complete elimination of Hezbullah and Hamas. But even of they were to succeed in these war aims, Israel still have a range of neighbouring states ranged against them, including Iran, Syria and the Yemen. Even if peace were to be declared tomorrow, the question tat is increasingly raised is ‘What happens on the first day after the war has ended?’ There are two massive questions of which the first is such as what type of government will emerge in Gaza and, secondly, who is going to pay for the enormous amount of reconstruction of an urban society where most of the private and public buildings end in ruins. The same question was asked, of course, after the conflict in both Syria and Iraq and it was plain that no forward thought, let alone planning, had been conducted about should happen when hostilities came to an end. At this stage, all that is left to contemplate is a whole series of refugee camps which may well exist for decades and must be locations where political radicalism and hostilities to the Israeli state will only fester and increase.

Yesterday was an interesting kind of day. Thursday is my shopping day and the carer called around at the appointed time and I prepared to go shopping. But upon my return, about an hour and a quarter later, I discovered that Meg had had a period of acute anxiety whilst I was away shopping and the carer had quite a difficult time with her. Having said that, I think that the carer had coped with Meg very well and had read her a couple of stories and done other things to divert her. But when I got home, Meg was still in rather an agitated condition but very gradually calmed down. After the shopping had been slowly unpacked, it was time to think about lunch and I scoured the freezer to see what could be rustled up as I wanted to save the mackerel I already had out of the freezer until tomorrow. I discovered something with no label but once it had been cooked in the microwave, I discovered that it was actually a ‘Boeuf à la Bourguignonne’ portion I had saved from the last time that I had cooked it as a special meal for Meg’s cousins when I last entertained them.

The news media has been absolutely saturated today with the news of the untimely death of Liam Payne, who shot to fame in the band One Direction, who died at a hotel in Argentina after falling from a third-floor balcony. Payne, 31, was posting on social media only hours before his death. Alcohol and medicines such as clonazepam were found in his room. The hotel authorities in Argentina have revealed an audio, possibly to avoid any accusations of blame, that he had been high on a cocktail of drink and drugs and was trashing his hotel bedroom. He fell to his death from a third floor balcony and when the news broke late on Wednesday evening, all kinds of interviews were interrupted with a news flash about the singer’s death. But at the risk of sounding very curmudgeonly, this was a young man of whom I had never heard, part of a band of which I had never heard and the music of which to my untrained ear sounded nothing out of the ordinary. There was masses of footage, played over and over again of female teenage fans lighting candles outside the hotel where he had perished but the amount of media attention devoted to it seemed to me to be massively disproportionate. This afternoon after we had lunched, I treated Meg and myself to something that I spotted in last night’s TV schedules. As the renowned actress Maggie Smith died very recently, I was not surprised when the BBC broadcast some of her most memorable performances, One of these is the almost completely true story of ‘The Lady in the Van’ which is the story of a derelict old lady who parks her van, which is also her home, first outside and then on the drive of Alan Bennett the playwright, who was living in Camden Town. This was endured for the best part of fifteen years all in all and part of the denouement of the film is that the old lady thought that she had been responsible for the death of a motor cyclist years before and was, in effect, on the run from the police. Maggie Smith as absolutely magnificent in the portrayal of the old lady and the film was both poignant and comic at the same time. After Meg’s carers had called in the afternoon, we treated ourselves to a rendition of Mozart Piano Concerto No 23. This has always been a particular favourite of mine since a 10″ LP was bought for me by my music teacher in about 1960 and I played it endless times. The second movement is incredibly sad and one can almost the tears through the notes. By contrast, the third movement is joyous in the extreme and one can imagine that the metaphorical cheque had arrived in that morning’s post. This was a performance in which the pianist actually conducts the orchestra from the piano which is almost certainly what Mozart himself would have done. This was followed by another Mozart piano concerto (probably 21) and was just as enjoyable.

The political news has been dominated by the assassination (or as the Israelis say, elimination) of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. I learned today that every single leader of Hamas has been assassinated by the Israelis and they are naturally jubilant. I saw an announcement made to bathers on a seaside resort on the Israel coast and there was universal celebration. The important question is whether this brings a ceasefire any closer or not. Netanyahu is saying that the war must continue until Hamas (and Hezbollah) are completely eliminated but I am not sure you can eliminate an ideology. Killing your opponents may be very satisfying to one’s electorate and the military but I cannot see how it advances the course of peace as resentments and recriminations must build up in the generations ahead. Meanwhile domestic politics is intrigued by two stories that are running. One is concerned with the forthcoming budget and whether Rachel Reeves may be able to pull ‘rabbits out of a hat’ There is some evidence that the electorate are being softened up for big tax rises with talk of a £40 billion black hole but on the other hand, there may be some plans afoot to sweeten the pill somewhat. The other interesting story concerns the backwoodsmen of the current Tory Party. A Tory MP has suggested Kemi Badenoch won’t have time to be an effective leader of the opposition because she’s a mum of young children. Sir Christopher Chope told ITV Meridian’s ‘The Last Word’ she is ‘preoccupied with her children. You cannot spend all your time with your family at the same time as being leader of the opposition’ he added. One can only imagine the derision about the voicing of such attitudes and naturally the Labour party and others are piling in gleefully to denounce such remarks – and, of course, Tories are put into a position where they either have to defend their colleague or effectively to disown him or to distance themselves from such remarks. Incidentally, similar remarks were never made about Margaret Thatcher when she had young children, as I am sure that many will now point out but, of course, Margaret Thatcher could afford to employ a full-time nanny, so that is all right then.