Well, I caught up on a little bit on sleep last night but not enough to eliminate the deficit. Yesterday morning, I was particularly pleased to see that Belgium had knocked USA comprehensively out of the World Cup as the US goalkeeper made a terrible and simple error in letting in a Belgian goal. After the controversy over the reinstatement of the USA player, suspended after the issue of a red card but allowed back to play after a Trump intervention, this was surely a just result. We are not yet at the stage where the last eight have been fully determined but European teams dominate the later stages of the competition. I would be amazed if France did not turn out to the ultimate winners as their football has been beautiful to watch and ruthlessly efficient at the same time. Soon, I say to myself, the World Cup will be over and we can return to a more normal existence in the evenings. My American friend and I are taking the opportunity to meet in the local park at about 6.00pm most evenings and, at this time of day, there is often a cooling breeze and we do a couple of circuits walking around the lake, chatting with each other and with the dog walkers who are in a similar relaxed frame of mind. Later on today, we have to acclimatise ourselves to another heatwave, but it appears, by all accounts, to be somewhat less extreme than a week or so ago and this time we are all well prepared for it. I have consulted the long range weather forecasts and it does appear that this time around the temperatures will not be quite so excessive but may well last for longer and a figure of 10 days is being quoted. France has recorded over 2,000 ‘excess’ deaths attributable to the hot spell and whilst these extreme weathers may not actually be killing the elderly population as such it is probably accelerating their days by some weeks or months. There are also some reports that the heatwave affecting the US may well impact upon the later stages of the World Cup as well and, despite the mandatory hydration breaks taken half way through each half, the games are liable to be played at such a pace that collapse through heat exhaustion is quite possible. Although my weekly session of Pilates beckons at midday, the actual studio is air conditioned so this should not be a source of stress for us. On the domestic political front, the Reform leader Nigel Farage is coming increasing scrutiny for the donations he has received from crypto-currency billionaires, one of them domiciled in Thailand. He is currently under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards so we shall not hear anything for several days or even weeks. Bit I was perturbed to listen to a ‘vox pop’ interview with members of the public who when told of Nigel Farage’s ‘transgressions’ (if such they prove to be) was of the opinion that ‘they were all at it’ and this means that the whole process of political debate and discourse is threatened, if not debased, if the public are convinced that all integrity is being lost from public life. We seem to think that in the UK that politics is not as ‘dirty’ as in other nations but I do get the impressions that standards of integrity are constantly being loosened over the years. Part of the problem is that the amount of money sloshing around the world’s financial system means that many of the political leaders can be bought off quite easily as the power and influence of the huge and largely American corporations gives them an income which surpasses most of the national income of the countries of the United Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I attended my Pilates session which is part of my weekly routine and we spent quite a lot of our session discussing my recent experiences of the traffic jam on the M5 at the end of last week, We are well used to traffic jams on the M5 and in particular on a Friday and as there is not a clear alternative route running down the west of England and hold ups on this road are quite a common occurrence particularly on a Friday (which is day when many are going to\/returning from a holiday in the West country) After I returned home I made myself a mackerel salad having many of the necessary ingredients to hand. There was some domestic political news breaking in the afternoon as Nigel Farage has announced his intention to resign as an MP and to seek reelection from the voters of Clacton (96% white and quite impoverished so natural UKIP\/Reform territory) Nigel Farage is the subject of at least two Parliamentary enquiries that he was the recipient of large amounts of money that he failed to declare. Farage argues that these monies were a ‘gift’ before he came an MP and were designed to offer him a degree of personal protection from the constant threats made against him but the Parliamentary rules are clear that donations made before one becomes an MP that threaten the integrity of the political process should be declared. But it could be that that there are even more allegations and enquiries concerning these donations which amount to millions of pounds. Farage’s claims to be the most persecuted politician in the UK hardly stack up when two MPs (Labour’s Jo Cox and the Conservative Sir David Amess ) have actually been murdered as a result of their parliamentary activities. Being hit by a custard pie whilst campaigning does not stack up against actually being murdered but, not for the first time, Farage is guilty of hype. He is claiming that he is being ‘stitched up’ by the political establishment but he is engaging in the most enormous political gamble to attempt to redress the political agenda but this whole attempt could well backfire leaving him in a most humiliating position. Farage is banking upon the fact that he will win ‘in the court of public opinion’ but what the good voters of Clacton will think about their MP and his antics remains to be seen. Certainly the vast amounts of money sloshing around Farage and the Reform party now present plenty of opportunities for his opponents in a by-election to have ready made ammunition to fire against him. It is too early to say at this stage whether the opposition parties might coalesce around one figure opposing Farage but a Conservative candidate might be the obvious choice with other parties (such as Labour) scarcely bothering to campaign<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, I caught up on a little bit on sleep last night but not enough to eliminate the deficit. Yesterday morning, I was particularly pleased to see that Belgium had knocked USA comprehensively out of the World Cup as the US goalkeeper made a terrible and simple error in letting in a Belgian goal. After […]<\/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-8399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399","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=8399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8401,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399\/revisions\/8401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}