{"id":8000,"date":"2026-01-26T18:47:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T18:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=8000"},"modified":"2026-01-26T18:47:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T18:47:21","slug":"monday-26th-january-2026-day-2142","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2026\/01\/26\/monday-26th-january-2026-day-2142\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, 26th January, 2026 [Day 2142]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At last, we have seen that the outpourings of indignation over the Trump insult to the UK troops who came to the aid of the Americans in Afghanistan are having some effect. Trump has issued a post which praises the British soldiers for their valour, but this falls a long way short of an apology. It is said that Keir Starmer has been as angry about this as it is possible to be and we have come to the point at which the so-called ‘special relationship’ has turned toxic. Starmer, in common with other European leaders has probably come to the view that the time is over trying to cozy up to Trump and his bizarre and brutish behaviour has to be called out for what it is. One has to distinguish between the President himself (who, after all, was elected), those whom he has chosen so surround himself and the rest of the military and intelligence communities. Collaboration will still probably continue as normal between these intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic who I wonder if, privately, regard Trump as an aberration whose time will go eventually. We have an interesting political development happening on our own shores and it follows the resignation of an MP in the Greater Manchester area which opens the way for Andy Burnham, the pretty successful Labour mayor of Manchester to return to the House pf Commons should he be nominated for and win the by election. But there are stormy waters ahead for the Labour Party. Burnham is popular but not unusually popular and there are others, like Wes Streeting, who are also fancying their chances in a Labour leadership contest. Should Burnham return to the House of Commons (and this is by no means certain given the resurgence of Reform in the opinion polls), then there would have to be an election for another mayor of Manchester and, again, it could be that the Reform candidate when chosen be victorious here. I suspect that there may be a certain anti-Northern bias at play as well here so the Labour party is facing the multiple problems of an unpopular leader (but better the devil that you know), a party low in the opinion polls and sone divisive party politics ahead. Here at home, it looks as though we are going to have a rather dreary and wet week in prospect with temperatures in the 6\u00b0-8\u00b0 range but at least this is better than ice snow and worse which sometimes afflicts is in late January. But I am still encouraged by the calendar which I consult every day which tells me that the days are lengthening by 1-2 minutes a day. What with one thing or another, I have got out of the habit of a daily walk down in to the town so I really must get back into training and do this daily walk. In the winter time, though, one is less likely to bump in to neighbours for a nice chat but there is always the possibility of chance meetings in Waitrose<\/em> when I go down to collect my newspaper and avail myself of their ‘free’ coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just when you imagine that the news from America could not get any worse, then it just has.  A man who was an intensive care nurse has been shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis making the second in just over a week. The details of the killings are also disturbing – although the shot man was carrying a gun which is by no means unusual in that state and this citizen had a licence to carry it, it appears from video clips that he was forced to his knees, was disarmed and then a total of ten shots were fired into him, of which the first probably killed him. The White House immediately declared him to be a domestic terrorist ‘brandishing’ a weapon and prepared to shoot ICE personnel but there was no evidence of this in the video and why were ten shots fired in any case?. To neutral observers, these cases point to a paramilitary force, not properly trained and, to put it mildly, trigger happy in the extreme when citizens are confronted. There is also news this afternoon of an image released of a black female protestor and there is a very high probability that the image was AI doctored. So we now have a White House almost manufacturing the news (or altering the images that they publish) which means that of the old ethical rules about impartiality have been completely abandoned. Back home, we have news that the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party have refused Andy Burnham permission to put himself forward as a candidate for a forthcoming by-election in Manchester. In the short term, this may relieve Starmer of the presence of an MP challenging for his job but one feels that any such short term victory will be a Pyrrhic one. A Pyrrhic victory is a success achieved at such a devastating cost to the victor that it is equivalent to a defeat. Named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose costly 279 BC battle against the Romans led to the phrase, it describes a scenario where winning the immediate battle or argument results in long-term ruin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday was a quiet Sunday but I have helping my Droitwich friend  overcome her flu-like symptoms which often assail us at this time of year. We cooked a meal together and had a generally very quiet time but the opportunity was taken for a more general tidy-up of some of the clutter on my worktop which is fine so long a I remember which items have been put into which cupboards. Because I slept in a little late this morning, I missed some of the normal political programmes, but I may well be able to pick up on a repeat of the Trevor Phillips programmes later on in the evening. I always think that as a presenter and as an interviewer, he has the edge on Lorna Kuenssberg on BBC. There tend to be two other programmes well worth a watch later on in the day on a Sunday. One of these is the David Attenborough programme which this week had some fascinating film shot of snow leopards and arctic foxes in the high hills of the Himalayas just about at the snow line whilst another is the Simon Reeves series on ‘Pilgrimage’ which this week is focusing on Jerusalem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At last, we have seen that the outpourings of indignation over the Trump insult to the UK troops who came to the aid of the Americans in Afghanistan are having some effect. Trump has issued a post which praises the British soldiers for their valour, but this falls a long way short of an apology. […]<\/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-8000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000","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=8000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8001,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000\/revisions\/8001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}