{"id":3032,"date":"2021-09-08T19:54:02","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T19:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=3032"},"modified":"2021-09-08T21:52:58","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T21:52:58","slug":"wednesday-8th-september-2021-day-541","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/09\/08\/wednesday-8th-september-2021-day-541\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 8th September, 2021 [Day 541]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today may well have been the hottest day of the year so far. It looked as though temperatures around the whole of the UK were about 30\u00b0 which is in the mid 80’s. However, the weather forecasters had warned us that this was going to be a short-lived heatwave as the whole\u00a0weather system is due to\u00a0break down tomorrow and it looks as though cooler and stormier weather will spread over the whole of the\u00a0country spreading from the south west. First thing\u00a0this morning, I spent some time\u00a0getting my accounts up to date and then I\u00a0texted one of my friends to get the telephone details of another – Meg and I were\u00a0anxious to know how our friend who had been hospitalised after heart problems was doing. I managed to make contact and got some up-to-date news (and quite by accident ran into him in the paper shop as well)\u00a0They are transferring his wife to a more specialised\u00a0coronary care unit in Worcester and to be in the hands of specialists and with\u00a0better\u00a0equipment must be a good thing. They have diagnosed some problems with her heart valves \u00a0and I just hope that with some modern treatments and drugs our friend will be able to get a new lease on life. She is a really avid gardener and organised a lot of the flower decorations within our local church so she is bound to be missed for a little while now. When I bumped\u00a0into her\u00a0<\/span>husband, I told him to forget about the normal clothing things that you take into hospital but just take along some perfume to wear. In the park, we had\u00a0quite a long\u00a0conversation with one of regular park regulars. Knowing that we meet several times a week, he had asked me to get a\u00a0specialised product from Amazon which I was happy to oblige. The package arrived\u00a0yesterday so it got handed over (and I\u00a0was repaid) so\u00a0that worked out well. We\u00a0were joined by Gloria, our wheelchair friend, and spent some time chatting but to be honest, whilst there was a pleasant\u00a0breeze, the temperature was steadily arising as the day wore on. We walked home\u00a0fairly slowly as we did not want to ‘push it’ in the extreme heat. Once we got home, our house was delightfully cool\u00a0after the heat of the midday sun outside and we adapted the quiche we were due to eat to make it into \u00a0a salad-type meal.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon, Meg and I spent a certain amount of time watching some of the debates in the House of Commons over the Health and Social Care proposals. The Labour\u00a0<\/span>Party MP’s were generally arguing that the government proposals to spend\u00a0over \u00a312 billion\u00a0supporting the NHS and finally\u00a0addressing the funding\u00a0problems was little better than a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. Also, there was very much a feeling that ‘ordinary workers’ would bear the\u00a0brunt of the cost\u00a0through\u00a0National Insurance contribution increases but the very wealthy (and their houses) would emerge almost unscathed. The reaction of many Tory\u00a0MPs was fascinating. They absolutely loathed the concept of spending a lot more money on the NHS (needed to address the\u00a0backlog after the treatments cancelled to cope with the COVID crisis). Also, as one or two them argued with a degree of passion that once you had a temporary ‘NHS’ tax it\u00a0would become permanent as to go to the electorate saying ‘let’s\u00a0get rid of the NHS tax<\/em>‘ would be electoral suicide. So they felt that they were being asked to support and to vote for the kind of\u00a0proposals that might well have been advocated by a Labour government – if there was no difference between themselves and a\u00a0socialist government, why would any one vote Tory ever again particularly in view of the manifesto pledges (at least two that had been broken) But despite all of the ‘chuntering’ and grumbling, the Tory MP’s voted en masse for this huge extension of the role of the state and the highest taxation levels seen for 70 years whilst the Labour\u00a0Party actually voted against. I have a feeling that there may well be\u00a0quite a cleavage in the Tory party which is\u00a0difficult to resolve. It is being said, though, that these spending increases\u00a0<\/span><\/span>sets the tone and the terms for the next general election and signals what type of prime minister Johnson he wants to be.\u00a0The wager is clear as \u00a0he believes voters will grudgingly forgive him for breaking not one, but two manifesto commitments if it means a huge increase in spending on the NHS and social care.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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In the later part of the afternoon, I spent some time preparing some of the documentation (largely form-filling) before we go off to see the building society which is hosting our savings accounts. Although the branch is closed to the public from about 2.30 we have been told to turn up at about 3.00 next Monday so that our documents can be processed – naturally, we are having to take along lots of ID at the same time.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today may well have been the hottest day of the year so far. It looked as though temperatures around the whole of the UK were about 30\u00b0 which is in the mid 80’s. However, the weather forecasters had warned us that this was going to be a short-lived heatwave as the whole\u00a0weather system is due […]<\/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-3032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032","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=3032"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3037,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions\/3037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}