Yesterday, Sunday, proved to be quite an interesting day. Meg and I got up after a fairly good night's sleep and the care workers arrived promptly at 8.00am to get Meg up, washed and dressed. We tend to watch the Politics programmes on a Sunday morning but as I am traipsing to and fro from the kitchen preparing our porridge and toast for breakfast, I often only see the program in brief snatches and such was the case today. However, the evening before I had put our recently purchased beef joint into our new cooking pot and doused it well with some 'old' red wine that had been open for a week or so. This I supplemented with some onion gravy and then popped the whole into the oven to cook whilst we went out for the morning. After breakfast, we received a visit from our Eucharistic minister who we have not seen for a week or so now and after she had departed, we were delighted to get a phone call from our University of Birmingham friend. We were delighted to accept his invitation for a coffee down in Waitrose and actually spent an hour and a half in each other's company which we found mutually enjoyable. We ruminated on the fact that we both enjoy a good argument by which I do mean a disputatious disagreement but rather an exploration of the extent to which you come to a position on the issues of the day by exploring each other's point of view. Today, for example, we were exploring what we both felt about the 'Assisted Dying' bill recently presented to Parliament and we were exploring how we both felt about this issue. After exploring this issue between us, I feel slightly less in favour than perhaps I was some time ago but will feel assuaged, in fact, if the hospice movement receives full and proper funding so that no one should die in extreme pain or discomfort if the end of life is properly managed for them. So then we returned home in time for the late morning carers (who were themselves half an hour late) and then started to think about lunch. Fortunately the beef was not too over cooked as it was cooked with plenty of wine and gravy but then I cheated a little, as time was pressing, and used some of the supplies of microwaved vegetables that cook in about three minutes. I was mightily relieved to discover that the new Denby cooking pot which I purchased in the last week and pressed into service this morning actually cleaned up pretty easily despite having been in the oven for the best part of three hours. After lunch, I had two programs lined up for us to watch in the afternoon. One of these was the rugby match between Leicester Tigers and Gloucester and we watched about twenty minutes or so of this witnessing Gloucester making a flying start. Then we turned to a program broadcast on Channel 4 the previous evening and one that I particularly wanted Meg and I to watch together. It was called 'Churchill: Britain's Secret Apartheid' and we both found it a fascinating watch. It revealed what might be called a hidden part of Britain's history. During WW2 after the USA entered the war, some 100,000 black troops were sent to Britain outnumbering the local black population about 12:1. The documentary revealed that the Americans wanted to enforce the strict segregation between the white and black troops and also revealed that the black troops were used as ancillary staff (cooks, labourers and so on) in support of the white troops who would be engaged in the eventual fighting. But the Americans attempted to enforce a type of apartheid (with which Churchill felt he had to comply as Britain needed American manpower, firepower and money) The programme revealed how open hostilities broke out between the white and black soldiers with the local indigenous English population taking the sides of the black soldiers against the white. The mood amongst the English locals was that they grateful for the Americans coming to our assistance whatever their skin colour but had no appetite for 'de facto' American style apartheid, enforced by the (white) military police. Open battles lasting for hours took place both in Tiger May (Cardiff), Bamber Bridge in Lancashire and the streets of Leicester. It may come as no surprise to learn that several black soldiers (but not a single white soldier) were charged by the military police with a range of offences including several deaths. All of this is available in official records if one knows where to look and full credit to Channel 4 by making a documentary as shocking as this.
The long anticipated Budget is due to be delivered in about 10 days time and, apparently, there is an unusual amount of behind the scenes tussle as ministers desperately try to defend their departments against Budget cuts whatever the official line of the government. On this occasion, the negotiations between the Treasury and individual ministers is quite intense and there is a report today that if there is the predicted rise in the National Insurance contributions paid by employers rather than employees this could bankrupt the care home sector. This may or not be the case and to the outside observer, it is hard to discern how much is the normal sabre rattling and how much is a dire warning of the actual consequences of budget decisions. The newly appointed ministers have a pretty terrible time during these pre-budget discussions as the senior civil servants who actually run the department will judge how capable is the minister nominally in charge of the department according to how well they have done in the Budget negotiations. Normally the Treasury which is an old hand at these pre-budget negotiations and representations will get its way but then ministers are bound by collective responsibility even if they have lost out. As an example of pure political naivety, the junior minister who was holding the 'Grenfell fire disaster' brief has been forced to step down because she rather stupidly attended a conference in which one of the major sponsors was a firm heavily criticised in the enquiry and the minister, by her attendance, looked as though she was actually endorsing the actions of the firm. The Grenfell survivors, through their representatives, let their displeasure be known to the right quarters after which Rushanara Ali, the minister concerned, was stripped of her brief.
© Mike Hart [2024]