{"id":2324,"date":"2021-05-07T21:25:23","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T21:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2324"},"modified":"2021-05-07T23:07:12","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T23:07:12","slug":"friday-7th-may-2021-day-417","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/05\/07\/friday-7th-may-2021-day-417\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 7th May, 2021 [Day 417]"},"content":{"rendered":"

So we had a beautiful, spring-like day today and it was a delight to walk down into town when we eventually did. Our walk was a little delayed so I left Meg on the ‘top’ bench (i.e. one of the three that overlooks most of the park and hence one of our favourite perches) chatting with one of our regulars who espied us from afar and whizzes along at a fantastic speed in her battery-driven wheelchair. On my way through the park, I chatted with another of our regular group, mainly about\u00a0<\/span>computing-like things as were\u00a0talking about\u00a0email clients, alternatives to Microsoft Office and so on. Having collected our newspapers, I made my way back through the park and now we had a little congregation of about 5-6 of us who seem to coincide at about the same time of day in the park. On the way home, we were pleased to have a\u00a0little\u00a0chat with an elderly French\u00a0lady who we know quite well (neighbours of some of our Catholic friends). She recently lost her husband who was pretty aged and had been very ill so we agreed that he was probably in ‘a better place’ right now. The funeral arrangements had gone quite\u00a0well but of course the numbers were very restricted in these COVID-19 lockdown days. We intimated to the French lady (who I think has taught\u00a0French in England for several decades during her\u00a0working life) that we would\u00a0be delighted to have her round into our garden to drink\u00a0either tea or champagne according to our mood. We have only had conversations in the street but would welcome the opportunity to share some of our life experiences with each other. When Meg and I used to go on holiday regularly to the South of Spain with the Saga group (catering for the over 50’s) we often found it fascinating to have\u00a0extended conversations with various people that we met about their life and careers. Everybody we met seemed to have such a fascinating ‘back history’ \u00a0and I am sure the same is probably true of the\u00a0people we meet here in Bromsgrove. And we had yet another cbat with our Italian friend on the way home – it was certainly the right kind of weather fo stopping and chatting all the way home.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We had to have a lightning lunch of cheese and biscuits because we had booked a fitting service for some clothes in the Longbriege branch of Marks and Spencer. Longbridge is where the assembly\u00a0track to the Austin mini used to be and \u00a0the site as a whole is now dominated by some large retail outlets and social housing. It makes the days of strikes in British car factories in the mid 70’s seem so\u00a0<\/span>incredibly distant – well, of course, it was half a century ago.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The political news this evening is almost completely unprecedented. Firstly, the Tories have won the parliamentary bye-election in Hartlepool with a massive majority (taking approximately two thirds of the vote in what had traditionally been one of the safest of\u00a0Labour seats) This is the first time the Tories have gained this seat since its creation about fif<\/span>ty years ago. The explanation is not\u00a0had to find.\u00a0<\/span>Election analyst professor Will Jennings, of the University of Southampton, said the 2021 results showed the Tories were ‘making largest gains, and Labour feeling most pain, in areas that voted strongly for Brexit.<\/em><\/span>‘ Conservatives are hoovering up Leave voters Prof Jennings said.\u00a0<\/span>‘<\/span>That’s the stomping ground where the Conservatives are doing really well.<\/em>‘ In terms of a broader analysis of the British\u00a0<\/span>political scene<\/span>\u00a0is is quite remarkable that a party\u00a0should be in power for about 11 years and then make massive gains in the heartlands of its opponents. I am not sure whether this has every happened before in British political history\u00a0and once\u00a0would have to\u00a0delve into\u00a0political history books to find a parallel. All of the voters who voted Brexit\/Leave seem to have fallen completely into the lap of the Tories. Added to this, of course, we have the ‘rally around the flag’ sentiment\u00a0concerning the successful\u00a0implementation of the\u00a0vaccination regimes . To give a pithy illustration of this, the leader of the Conservatives in Walsall (where the Tories made enormous gains) was asked why the Conservatives had done so well in Walsall<\/em>. For a local politician\u00a0campaigning on local issues, his answer was revealing: ‘Well\u00a0it’s all down to Boris Johnson and the success of his vaccination campaign<\/em>‘ Enough said! In the meantime, the Labour\u00a0Party seems to have strengthed its position in Wales and in Scotland, the SNP have\u00a0also gained\u00a0ground – whether enough to form an\u00a0absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament it is too early to tell. It does look as though, right\u00a0across the UK (excluding Northern Ireland where there were no elections) that members of governing parties (Tory in England, Labour in Wales, SNP in Scotland) have generally\u00a0reinforced their position. Is this a vase of ‘rally round the flag’ as the pandemic crisis is starting to recede?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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So we had a beautiful, spring-like day today and it was a delight to walk down into town when we eventually did. Our walk was a little delayed so I left Meg on the ‘top’ bench (i.e. one of the three that overlooks most of the park and hence one of our favourite perches) chatting […]<\/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-2324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324","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=2324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2327,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions\/2327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}