We wake up this morning to the unwelcome news that the UK may be dragged into the conflict of the US with Iran. After a thirteenth day of strikes, the Iranians have warned the UK that the country may become a target as it is is allowing US forces to position strike forces in US military bases on UK soil. Our Ministry of Defence has responded ‘robustly’ but a war is the last thing that the UK economy needs in its present fragile state. These threats may not come to anything but Iran has certainly attacked other allies of the US in the region so nothing can be ruled out at this stage. The predicted rain for the forthcoming weekend will arrive ‘for some’ but I do not think that the showers will extend as far as the Midlands and another hot week is forecast for the last week in July. We are now in a situation in whichever patch of grass you see has been turned into a straw colour and the grass even crunches when you walk upon it. Somehow, though, our park authorities have managed to keep our park on the green side and they will not have been watering but have evidently sown a very hardy grass seed in the dim and distant past. The recriminations in the Labour party are still continuing after the change in regime and some are urging that Andy Burnham should somehow build bridges to try to tap into the expertise of those who have lost office but the mechanism by which this might be done is far from clear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I actually awoke, assisted by the alarm, at 4.45 this morning. This is because I had an appointment in the Endoscopy department of a local treatment centre to have removed a polyp, harmless at the moment bit with the potential of turning nasty. Having been given strict instructions not to eat or drink anything for hours beforehand, we had to arrive at the clinic at 7.50 am and hence my American friend (who was taking me to the clinic) and I set off for the clinic at 7.00am. I imagined that when I arrived at the clinic I would be the first in the queue but was surprised to find about five other people also awaiting treatment. In these procedures, various bits of paper work and some medical preliminaries are undertaken and the young nurse allocated to me explained that there were now about eight treatment booths so evidently the capacity had been massively expanded over just the last few years. I was offered and readily accepted the offer of sedation for the procedure and the doctor performing the procedure allowed me to continue to wear my earphones for the ancient iPhone 4 I use solely as a type of iPlayer on occasions such as these. I scarcely remember getting much beyond the first half of the Mozart track so whatever sedative was used must have been pretty powerful as in time the procedure must have been completed although it took anything between 20-30 minutes. I did eventually look up the effects of the medication adminstered to me and discovered is a fast-acting benzodiazepine used for sedation, anxiety relief, and seizure control. Primary effects include drowsiness, muscle relaxation, and anterograde amnesia which frequently causes patients to forget events that occur during and immediately after the drug’s administration. So bit by bit, I think things are improving in our NHS. My American friend was sent for after a short recovery period and then we went downstairs to eat a very much appreciated protein-rich breakfast. I was feeling just a little knocked out after the procedure but my American friend looked after me during the day as I had a quiet day of recovery. In all honesty I had not slept particularly well the night before so was pleased to have someone with me all day – in practice the NHS guidelines were I needed to have someone in attendance for about 10-12 hours and of course driving, drinking alcohol or operating machinery (including boiling a kettle!) was out-of-bounds. During the start of the day we started to watch Vera Britten’s ‘Testament of Youth’ and only got about half way through the second episode before we broke off and cooked an evening meal together. In the early episodes the film vividly portrays the enthusiastically optimistic spirit in which individuals entered the Great War (as it became to be known) and the full horrors of fighting over appeared to be yards of ground will no doubt be well illustrated in later episodes. Vera Britten’s daughter was Shirley Williams who was to become a prominent figure in the post War Labour party and eventually became one of the ‘Gang of Four’ in the breakaway SDP, later SDLP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is being reported on ‘Sky News’ that Donald Trump may press for FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to lead the UN which is a proposition which sounds so fantastic it is hard to believe. Firstly the UN has its own procedures and protocols to determine who the next UN Secretary General is likely to be. But Trump senses an opening among a field that one insider described as seven lame candidates. The contenders include Chile\u2019s socialist former president Michelle Bachelet, who could face US resistance, and Argentina\u2019s Rafael Grossi, the current director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who could face concerns about the disputed Falkland Islands from the veto-holding UK. Trump\u2019s concept would upend the anticipated selection of a candidate from Latin America or the Caribbean \u2014 a region last repped by secretary-general Javier P\u00e9rez de Cu\u00e9llar of Peru between 1982 and 1991. But multiple sources said that the UN\u2019s soft policy of rotating the top job among geographic regions would not necessarily block Infantino and that it is possible he could pick up nominations from multiple countries. The point has to be made that the moral authority and freedom of manoeuvre exercised by the Secretary General of the UN seems sadly to have declined over the years. This has been coupled by a lack of willingness of the US to fund some of the UN’s activities of late. The exercise of the veto power by any one of the five permanent members (USA, Russia, China. France and Britain) means that serious action over major global issues is generally not forthcoming. Meanwhile the Iranian war rumbles on and the pessimist might conclude that this conflict could persist for months. America seems convinced that it can bomb its way into forcing concessions from Iran but every missile and bomb that falls threatens to deepen Iranian resistance even more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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