Isn’t technology frustrating when it doesn’t work? Having got up early yesterday morning, I had the bright idea of seeing if I could get my Mozart aria presentation shown on either of my big TVs. My first point of call was my Music Lounge but here the Toshiba TV that I have installed recently updated its software and the internet access seems to have gone only to be replaced by a myriad of apps all of which I do not want or need and for which I would have to pay in any case. An attempt to use ‘Bluetooth’ led to a message that pairing was ‘Unsuccessful’ whilst an attempt to use Alexa only gave me the message that Alexa ‘cannot help you with that’ So I abandoned the Toshiba and tried the Panasonic in my main lounge. Bu using Alexa to hunt out internet access, my efforts were eventually crowned with success but it had taken an hour of my life fiddling about and nothing seemed to quite work as you might expect. Frustratingly, having got it once, it seems a bit difficult to get it back again but I think with a bit of fiddling about I can get to where I want. Yesterday dawned quite bright and sunny and I have in mind to attend a concert in our local parish church of St Johns. Later on in the afternoon, I have three Women’s Six Nations rugby matches to keep me entertained as well as a visit from my American friend (hence my fiddling about trying to get things to show her on the TV) The Mandelson row is rumbling on and one gets the feeling it will only end badly for the Prime Minister, if not now then in the May local elections. Some inside stories are that to the effect that the senior civil servant tried to do Starmer a favour because he knew that one of the grounds upon which Mandelson failed his security assessment would have been blocked by No 10 anyway so that is why the news of his failure was not passed onto him. As often in these matters, it is the ‘court of public opinion’ that matters most in the long run and the various opposition parties from Reform to the Greens must be rubbing their hands in glee at the self inflicted wounds on the Labour party. I saw Labour MP on TV last night declaiming that everyone knew that Mandelson was a ‘wrong un’ (he had already been sacked twice before) so it didn’t take a security check to bring him down as he should never have been appointed in the first place. The Iranian situation seems to be crawling towards some kid of resolution as the Straits of Hormuz are now declared to be open, despite the fact that the Americans are blockading both ends of it. Trump is desperately trying to get these Straits renamed (and at one point after himself!) but is now trying to impose the name of the ‘Straits of Iran’ I am not sure whether the cartographers pf the world can keep pace with all f these name changes and how many will survive the Trump presidency in any case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After I had breakfasted, I went to collect my copy of the newspaper and then re-parked the car in the local park, from where I could walk to the nearby church of St. Johns. There was a ‘free’ concert was being held by four flautists working as a quartet and this was followed by coffee and cake. The first piece was a piece by Bach probably for a string quartet but transposed for flutes. This was followed by three other pieces, largely by French composers which were pleasant enough. Whilst at the church, I bumped into two other members of my U3A Classical Music group as I thought I might) and \u00a0chatted with them before making my way home. I lunched on potatoes and a lamb stew whilst watching the England vs. Scotland Six nations rugby match in which the English completely overran the Scots with some very good rugby. Later on the in the afternoon, my American friend called around and I managed (with a bit of a struggle) to show her the video clips of the Mozart arias and then we entertained ourselves by picking some of our favourite tracks from YouTube<\/em>. They are playing \u00a0the feed of a live performance of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ on Tuesday next so as this will not be heavily subscribed, I am going \u00a0to buy a couple of tickets for my friend and I to view \u00a0next week. I missed the Wales vs. France rugby in which Welsh women seem to have a good first half but were then overwhelmed by the French. I might try and catch up with the Italy-Ireland match which I believe is being shown on BBC i-Player. In the war in the Middle East, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and reportedly attacked nearby vessels after briefly reopening the waterway yesterday. Donald Trump has downplayed the closure, saying Iran got ‘a little cute’ – but insisted the US would not be blackmailed by the move. The Sunday newspapers, though, will be dominated by the leaking accounts from the Mandelson affair. It now appears that a clutch of civil servants knew of the failure of the Mandelson vetting but somehow this news was not relayed to the Prime Minister. Daytime TV might be red hot next week, though, as first Starmer has to make a statement to the House of Commons and the following day, the dismissed senior civil servant at the Foreign Office is due to give evidence at a Select Committee of the House of Commons. But one has to wonder what is the point of a water tight procedure to vet important posts if the actual procedures are complied with but the actual result not communicated to the relevant decision makers? Cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo and cabinet office permanent secretary Catherine Little were both present at a meeting between Sir Keir Starmer and senior civil servants on Tuesday night, when the prime minister was finally told about Lord Mandelson’s failure to pass vetting – and they had apparently known of the decision for weeks beforehand. At first glance this should mean that the machinery of government needs to be overhauled but more experienced figures than these two (who had not been in post very long) should surely not to have allowed this debacle to occur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Isn’t technology frustrating when it doesn’t work? Having got up early yesterday morning, I had the bright idea of seeing if I could get my Mozart aria presentation shown on either of my big TVs. My first point of call was my Music Lounge but here the Toshiba TV that I have installed recently updated […]<\/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-8206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206","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=8206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8208,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8206\/revisions\/8208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}