I woke up yesterday morning to a prospect of quite a brighter day with the weather hopefully on the turn a little. Moreover, my social prospects look quite bright in the week ahead. Yesterday will be the third Saturday in the month so there will be a meeting of the CAMEO (Come And Meet Each other) at the Methodist Centre where will be coffee and biscuits followed by a talk at some stage. Then the following day, my American friend and I have decided that we are going to cook a Sunday chicken lunch together. Our cooking lunch coincides with the final set of fixtures in the Women’s 6 Nations rugby competition in which the crunch match will be England vs. France (the two top teams by far) late on Sunday afternoon. It is also the English football cup final afternoon which I may watch as well as undertaking some lawn mowing. Later in the week, we have a general meeting of U3A (University of the Third Age) followed by a talk on politics (‘Why all political careers end in failure’) but I shall have to turn up late for this as Tuesday is my Pilates day. Then we have our much anticipated ‘day out’ to Derbyshire (Bakewell, Kedleston Hall) on Wednesday and then on Friday my American friend and I are going to visit Harvington Hall (already paid for but a postponed visit) followed by a delayed birthday meal. My American friend and I were discussing how we were both were involved in a range of social activities that add their own weekly rhythms but we were pleased that although we enjoyed each other’s company, it was not going to be at the expense of our other social engagements i.e. life has to be a balance of our social and domestic commitments. We both happen to be more or less in a sweet spot where we are happy enough in our various ventures but both of us are having to keep a careful watch on our activities to make sure that we do not over-extend ourselves which, paradoxically, might be quite an easy thing to do. On the political front, I notice with a degree of pleasure that the what has been cleared by the Labour National Executive Committee for Andy Burnham to contest a parliamentary seat – one has to say that ‘Thank God’ that the Labour party does recognise that it has a potential saviour in the offing! Trump has now returned from China and with the Iranian war in a state poised between stalemate and abeyance, I wonder whether attention will turn once again to the Epstein affair where there is certainly a lot more to be revealed. In the meantime, American food prices and petrol prices are rising and Trump’s personal popularity is waning. A quick Google search revealed to me a website that I may well bookmark which charts and documents the President’s popularity. This has been a consistent downward trend and the latest data reveals that 481 days into the presidency, the president’s net approval rating is -21, down 0.3 points since last week (36% approve, 57% disapprove, 5% not sure) After I had bookmarked the site and copied over the graph and headline statistics, there was quite a lot of further commentary in which the figures were broken down by issue, state and various other demographics so that you could track exactly where Trump was losing popularity. One of the expressions associated with President Bill Clinton was ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ and nothing much has changed since it is the 50% rise if gas(petrol) prices and the general inflation in food prices which is hurting Trump even more than the Iranian war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I made sure that I breakfasted early and went down early to the Methodist Centre to secure a car parking space and then had coffee with diverse old ladies, including one from my (Catholic) church. The we had a talk which I did not think I was going to enjoy but turned out to be very informative. It was given by an employee of AbilityNet which is an organisation, partly funded by BT itself, which is set up to provide free digital skills training for older people and disabled adults. The point was well made that the (4-bit) technology that put men on the moon in 1969 and in which the astronauts were incredibly well trained was now replaced by technology which was millions of times more powerful and was now in the hands of most of us wit no training whatsoever. The talk that was given was well delivered, sympathetic and reassuring in nature and very informative. The instructor handed out a leaflet which detailed for us a free weekly newsletter from Which which alerted one to the latest scams, the specialised 159 number to report fraud and scams, the AskSilver website to check out whether a suspicious offering is in fact a scam or not and a website enabling one to ascertain enabling the spotting of AI fakes. So I actually learnt quite a lot about services of which I was previously unaware and I must say that I was impressed by the range of help (including in one’s home in selected cases) for these members of the population for whom this was an important need. This afternoon I am going to divide my attention between gardening, blogging and the FA Cup Final depending on how the mood takes me. For lunch, I decided to cut up some already cooked him not quite small squares and then fry these off with onions and make a Spanish ham omelette. this turned out to be a lot bigger than I had anticipated and I ended up throwing half of it away. For my TV viewing this evening, I shall probably the repeat of the Churchill biopic ‘Their Finest Hour’ which had recently some pretty positive reviews (which I have already seen but probably worth a re-viewing). Meanwhile, in London this afternoon there are two rival demonstrations to keep the police well and truly busy. Tens of thousands of protesters have descended on London for two rival marches – the Unite the Kingdom rally, organised by far-right figure Tommy Robinson, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration. More than 4,000 police officers have been deployed to the capital, and they are managing a so-called ‘sterile zone’ between the two marches. Officers are also using drones, police horses and dogs, and have armoured vehicles on standby. The Metropolitan Police has called it one of the most significant policing operations in years. Protesters attending the Unite the Kingdom march gathered in Kingsway, before heading to Whitehall and a rally in Parliament Square Many could be seen waving Union flags, and chants of ‘we want Starmer out’ could be heard. Protesters could be seen wearing ‘Make England Great Again (Mega)’ red hats, with others draped in Union flags. Reporting from the scene, BBC correspondent Tom Symonds said people there had a wide range of views – including those who want to see the end of the current government, and others who feel that white people, in particular white working class people, are being discriminated against in the UK today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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