{"id":2223,"date":"2021-04-21T18:15:11","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T18:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2223"},"modified":"2021-04-21T22:17:38","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T22:17:38","slug":"wednesday-21st-april-2021-day-401","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/21\/wednesday-21st-april-2021-day-401\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 21st April, 2021 [Day 401]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today started off as quite a gloomy and overcast day and the temperature seemed to have dropped\u00a0markedly since yesterday. We had\u00a0plans to make a\u00a0little trip this afternoon so we hoped that the weather would gradually improve in the afternoon. Knowing that we were going to make a trip out, having collected our newspapers we popped into our local Waitrose<\/em> for two purposes. We had made some online\u00a0clothing\u00a0purchases for Meg from John Lewis and organised delivery (at no charge in our local store) Although the order was theoretically ready for collection on late Thursday afternoon (and hence, Friday morning actually) I got a text to say it was ready for collection this morning, which was very welcome. At the same time we picked up some sandwiches and biscuits ready for later on in the day. We had organised a fairly early lunch for ourselves and set off for Coughton Court (a nearby National Trust property) by 2.00pm, having had to call off and fill the car with\u00a0<\/span>petrol. As it happened, we got to our destination, guided by SatNav about 25 minutes before our timed entrance but we were still greeted with open arms and\u00a0allowed in. By this stage of the day, the weather had brightened\u00a0considerably and once having negotiated our\u00a0entrance we\u00a0went straight to the outdoors cafe, not least for the pleasure of having an outside snack once again conscious of the knowledge that we\u00a0were helping the\u00a0National Trust finances anyway (admission being gratis<\/em> for National Trust members) Then we went on a most pleasant woodland walk, encompassing a walk by the river Arden and feeling ‘at one’ with nature. A particular feature of Coughton Court which has impressed us greatly is their use of natural materials to enhance the nature of any walks you undertake.\u00a0Thus at various information points, the message was\u00a0provided \u00a0by the expedient of writing the message (black\u00a0paint, white background) on the ‘slices’ taken from a large tree which had fallen (imagine slicing a carrot and you will get my meaning) Also, any large branches are used to\u00a0provide natural edging\u00a0materials for the\u00a0paths in the woodland walks so the whole\u00a0experience is an incredibly\u00a0naturalistic one. Having\u00a0got most of the way through our intended trip we espied a strategically placed bench upon which we gratefully sat ourselves. We had taken a couple of portable chairs with us\u00a0because we know from experiences in the past that suitably placed benches can be short supply so we had equipped ourselves not\u00a0only with portable chairs but also a tarpaulin in case we needed to camp out on the grass. So we sat and drank coffee, ate some absolutely delicious rice cakes\u00a0coated with an orange and dark\u00a0chocolate topping and observed the distant rooks – and a flight of birds that seemed to soar a little like raptors but which we\u00a0couldn’t really identify. So we had a delightful day out, only\u00a0encountering the normal rush hour when we returned to Bromsgrove at about 5pm in the afternoon.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As indicated in last night’s blog, the two crucial decisions that I was expecting today actually came late last night. Looking firstly at the collapse of the plans for a European Super League for elite football clubs, it looks as though ‘fan power’ from below has caused the whole project to collapse –\u00a0demonstrations at grounds all over the\u00a0<\/span>county displayed the sentiment that the ‘beautiful game’ was being\u00a0expropriated from them. The government having said that it was going to create an enquiry into the whole affair, it is not going to abandon it but is probably using this as an occasion to\u00a0engineer some changes in the structure of the industry in the UK. It is\u00a0interesting to note that no German clubs were\u00a0involved, nor could they be, as fans are entrenched much more in the ownership of their clubs.\u00a0Whether any of the elements of the German model can be used in the UK is a moot point as so many British clubs are now owned, or controlled, by\u00a0oversees companies, owners and entities. (As an aside, the Brexit\u00a0slogan of ‘take back control<\/em>‘ is particularly apposite here but not from\u00a0European\u00a0institutions but from other varieties of an\u00a0aggressive and\u00a0rootless capitalist model that can buy and sell football clubs whatever the ultimate wishes of their fan base. Who ‘owns’ a football club – the fans ‘morally’ or the large commercial interests ‘legally’?)\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The second interesting question is the ramifications of the ‘Guilty’\u00a0verdicts in the George Floyd case in the USA.\u00a0The view is being\u00a0strongly expressed that this court case is only the start of a very long road for the institutional racism which permeates\u00a0American society (or at least\u00a0<\/span>American police forces) to be addressed. Of course given the\u00a0American legal system there is still a long process of appeals to follow and a gap of eight weeks before sentencing so the verdict is one one battle in the course of a very long war. Some of the ramifications of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement are washing up onto UK shores as well because black people in the UK justice system are probably not treated as well as they\u00a0should be.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today started off as quite a gloomy and overcast day and the temperature seemed to have dropped\u00a0markedly since yesterday. We had\u00a0plans to make a\u00a0little trip this afternoon so we hoped that the weather would gradually improve in the afternoon. Knowing that we were going to make a trip out, having collected our newspapers we popped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2223"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2228,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions\/2228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}