{"id":2230,"date":"2021-04-22T20:15:54","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T20:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2230"},"modified":"2021-04-22T20:34:17","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T20:34:17","slug":"thursday-22nd-april-2021-day-402","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/22\/thursday-22nd-april-2021-day-402\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday, 22nd April, 2021 [Day 402]"},"content":{"rendered":"

We woke up this\u00a0morning to a really bright and beautiful morning but not one we could\u00a0enjoy in the usual way. We were somewhat delayed this morning by the arrival of the\u00a0Waitrose<\/em> order which had to be unpacked and then put away. We were aware of\u00a0the fact that Mike had an appointment for a CT scan in the Kidderminster treatment centre (some 14 miles day distant) at midday – so we needed to alter our routines somewhat. We went down in the car to pick up our\u00a0newspapers and then had to pop into Waitrose<\/em> in order to return a garment to John Lewis via their Waitrose<\/em> network. \u00a0Actually, this bit worked pretty well as the\u00a0original delivery note contained a returns address and a QR code. All we needed to do is to get onto our John Lewis’s\u00a0account get a RMA code, then\u00a0include it in the packed and readdressed parcel and hand it in to\u00a0Waitrose<\/em>. I already had an email acknowledging the safe receipt of the returns package back into the system\u00a0and a refund will no doubt shortly follow. The we went back home by car and had some elevenses in our front garden (<\/span>delightfully sunny). I then went by car to\u00a0Kidderminster and\u00a0got there about 10 minutes early, got scanned very quickly and was back home at\u00a0only a\u00a0few minutes after 1.0pm. In the afternoon, we decided to make a trip out to Marks and Spencer’s in Longbridge (on the site of the old Austin assembly line) to do some clothes shopping for some much needed\u00a0items for Meg and then got home in the mid afternoon. It was a glorious day and we had to forego our normal walk to the park but hopefully, the high pressure system will persist for a day or so yet so we have a nice clear day tomorrow, all being well.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There seems to be something going wrong with our various friends computer systems at the moment. Some of the regulars who we <\/span>FaceTime<\/em> or <\/span>Skype<\/em> seem to be having a variety of computer problems which means that we haven’t been able to communicate with each other over the last few days. The modern technology is wonderful when it works but\u00a0systems can be a nightmare if things start to go wrong – we are hopeful that these problems will soon be \u00a0sorted out so\u00a0the we can start to chat again.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a World Climate summit organised I believe by the Americans in which various leaders are appearing to pledge allegiance to new emissions targets. To get the ball rolling, as it were, Jo Biden has agreed to cut\u00a0greenhouses emissions by 50% by the year 2030. The interesting question is whether both China and the USA as the earth’s two biggest\u00a0<\/span>polluters will be able to generate the changes needed in our whole economy and ways of living to achieve meaningful objectives. One suspects that the Chinse government, once it puts it’s mind to it, might be in a better position to deliver than the\u00a0Americans. The Americans are\u00a0apparently concerned that the\u00a0Chinese might be a long way ahead of them in the deployment of solar technologies. Whilst some argue that \u00a0as the\u00a0Chinese who have access to cheap capital and labour, then it is no surprise that they dominate some 60& of the available market in ‘solar’\u00a0technologies’. But a\u00a0<\/span>better explanation of China\u2019s success in solar is that the energy industry prioritises low costs\u00a0and China excels at cost-cutting and scaling \u2014 not just from cheap resources\u00a0but from a superior ability to innovate manufacturing processes to drive down cost and scale quickly, known as process innovation. One also wonders whether Jo Biden can push the necessary\u00a0legislative procedures through Congress at the\u00a0moment as there are so many vested interests still in the energy industries.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Greensill affair rumbles on with revelations that David\u00a0<\/span>Cameron lobbied the Treasury so much that he was in danger of morphing from ‘Dodgy Dave’ to ‘Desperate Dave’ as he sought, repeatedly, to get the\u00a0Treasury to favour the firm which was now employing him (and which\u00a0eventually went\u00a0bankrupt) At the same time, Boris Johnson has been\u00a0revealed as almost being at the beck and call of James Dyson (vacuum cleaner manufacturer who was an ardent Brexiteer but who eventually took his business off to Singapore to lower his costs) What is some concern to some senior civil servants is that Boris Johnson shows\u00a0himself as being susceptible to\u00a0exchanges of messages via\u00a0WhatsApp – as such, these are not ‘meetings’ and therefore are not subject to the Ministerial code of accountability and so on. The combination of these types of stories seem to\u00a0ensure that the Tory party seem to be the\u00a0absolute party of sleaze – not\u00a0that they care as the public does not seem to mind so much\u00a0apparent sleaze as the\u00a0Tories are so far ahead in the opinion polls. It is a strange world!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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We woke up this\u00a0morning to a really bright and beautiful morning but not one we could\u00a0enjoy in the usual way. We were somewhat delayed this morning by the arrival of the\u00a0Waitrose order which had to be unpacked and then put away. We were aware of\u00a0the fact that Mike had an appointment for a CT scan […]<\/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-2230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230","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=2230"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2237,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230\/revisions\/2237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}