Yesterday I attended our local GP's surgery for a planned routine health monitoring appointment. I knew the nursing assistant from my dealings with her in years gone by and a range of tests were undertaken (blood samples and the like) for which the results will be available next week. Today I had needed to arrange for a special 'sit' session to care for Meg whilst I attended the surgery and would normally have needed to attend next week for the results. However, the nursing assistant indicated I could have these results over the phone which option I actually chose as it will help to make life a little easier for us next week. As lunchtime would have been somewhat delayed, I changed plans and cooked a quicker lunch and was quite surprised by how tasty it turned out to be even though it was odds and ends left over from the weekend joint. After we had lunched, the weather seemed to have improved considerably over this morning so we decided to have a quick walk down into the park. This was quite beneficial for the two of us in terms of getting some good fresh air into our lungs but at that time in the afternoon, there were none of the usual park friends or acquaintances with whom it would have been nice for a chat. When the care worker called in the late afternoon for Meg's comfort call, as I know him pretty well by now I asked him to give me an estimate in round terms of how many of his clients tend to get out and about (as Meg and I do) and how many are confined to their own homes. After some thought, the care worker thought that only about 40% of the people for whom he cared managed to get out of the house (where they were capable of it) and to enjoy some of the walks to which Meg and I have become accustomed. It might be the case that Meg sleeps a bit more soundly if she had a walk in the afternoon but this is only the slightest of impressions at this stage. In the middle of the day we received a phone call from the OT (Occupational Therapist) who had called around last week and she needed to check some of the access arrangements if a new hospital-style 'floor bed' is to be delivered. We conjecture that this might mean that the request for a floor bed has been granted but neither of us are certain of this at this stage.
After viewing some 'vox pop' with some American voters, my interest has been rekindled into why there seems to be such a resurgence in populist and extreme right wing leaders (Farage in the UK, Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey and evidently Trump in the USA) and it did not take me too long to find an interesting piece of research published in the Harvard Business Review, which was written mainly from a social psychological perspective. The authors argue that there are two paths to leadership which they term the dominance model (assertive, controlling,dominating and intimidating) and the prestige model (individuals who are respected, admired and held in high esteem) We could almost think of this as 'traditional patrician Conservative' (Macmillan) versus the populist (Johnson, Farage). The gist of the article is that dominant leaders achieve their appeal when the socioeconomic environment is riddled with uncertainty and people experience a lack of personal control, The argument is supported by three empirical studies, two of which relate to the US (with sample sizes of 700 and 1400) and the final one derived from the World Attitudes Survey (with a sample size of 138,000) These findings are hardly new as the roots of fascism are well known to be associated with deep economic uncertainties. Although I found the argument appealing, I also thought that it was somewhat simplistic and was in need of some refinement. I would point out that in today's society, the role of social media cannot be ignored and in particular the techniques deployed by the extreme right to offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. We are finding this in the British political scene and, in particular the way in which connection is made with the voting public by extremely simplistic three word slogans ('Get Brexit Done' 'Stop the Boats') Perhaps it goes without saying that I personally feel that the answer to complex problems must needs be complex and not the reduction to a simplistic three word slogan.
In the American Democrats Congress, Joe Biden is handing over the reins to the next generation in the form of Kamala Harris. I heard one pithy American commentator explain 'now we can move onto real policies and not talking about Biden's age and Trump's dementia') What will be interesting is to ascertain what degree of 'political bounce' Kamala Harris will receive in the polls after a few days of generally favourable TV and press coverage. I suspect that one of the keys in the American presidential election will be the attitudes taken to abortion. In the USA, state after state has made access to abortion progressively much more difficult and practically impossible in some states. There is a particular irony in all of this in that the American right who are responsible for much of the shift in abortion policies across the USA are generally committed to reducing the role of government in the private lives of citizens except in the case of abortion where in effect the power of the state to dictate the outcome of women's lives is increasing. In the meanwhile, Trump is engaging in even more bizarre personal attacks ('I am better looking than she is' being one of the latest outbursts)
In general, I only scan the business pages of the newspapers with hardly much attention but one issue caught my attention. Apparently two of our supermarket chains (Asda, Morrisons) are in deep trouble recently and the root cause appears to be in the role of private equity firms who have increased their stake in these two firms. As a result, customers are being asked to pay the price for the fact that the private equity firms are extracting massive profits from what they perceive to be cash cows. I am undoubtedly over simplifying the nature of the economic analysis here but we have seen the role of private equity firms before in our High Streets (for example Boots the Chemist) and I try to make my own little protest about this by not shopping in Boots if I have the choice.