Yesterday was the day when the clocks went back and we were all supposed to get an extra hour in bed. In my case, though, some of that bonus time was spent in correcting various clocks and appliances so I did not appreciate the full benefit of it. Fortunately, I could remember important things like the central heating setting and even the fiddlier things like the microwave were not too troublesome. It proved to be a quiet Sunday because we saw neither our Eucharistic minister from our church or, indeed, our University of Birmingham friend. So Meg and just made a quick trip down the hill to pick up our newspaper and back again. I had promised one of the carers that if she had sufficient time left over from Meg's lunchtime call, she could view Meg's 50th wedding anniversary video which we can access through our TV and so she enjoyed listening to this and also viewing some of the other wedding photos that we have on the same website.
Reflecting upon the little scraps that I have gleaned about the American presidential election, I would like to propound a new theory (or, at least, a speculation) There are literally scores of opinion polls both national and local but they all face one large problem, which is how to evaluate the views of those who do not wish their communicate their views to anyone and particularly not a polling organisation - hence the 'silent' ones. Now we know that there is a group of Republicans of the traditional variety who actually despair of what is happening to their country if led by Donald Trump and hence they form a silent group of Republican voters who are prepared to vote on this one occasion for Harris. But I also suspect that there is a parallel and probably larger group of Kamala Harris haters who, despite the very evident shortcomings of Donald Trump are secretly preparing to vote for him. Where does this hatred of Kamala Harris come from? Well, there are several streams that flow into this particular well. Very important are those who are appalled by the illegal immigration questions and some of these immigrants are camped (literally) on the outskirts of even Democrat strongholds such as Chicago. Secondly, there are polices such as defunding the police which sound to be barking mad. Thirdly, there are those who doubt her abilities to handle a modern economy. But perhaps of most importance are those who have heard the labelling of Kamala Harris as 'far left' which epithet is constantly thrown around by Donald Trump but it is a sad fact of life that if you throw enough handfuls of mud at a wall, some of it will stick. So with this label of 'radical far left' around her neck, Harris is already losing the support of some Latino and Black male workers. It is undoubtedly the case that she has an extremely strong case on abortion rights for women which the Trump regime has tried quite successfully to dismantle and this issue alone will persuade some younger Republican inclined young women to vote for Harris. But I contend that there are several other demographic factors at work and all of these tend to suggest that Harris is not meeting their concerns. So just as in the UK, we have the secret Tory voters who never divulge their opinions to pollsters, I suspect that there is a well of silent haters for both of the candidates but, crucially, the pool of Harris haters are probably larger than the pool of Trump haters (the intensity of whose hate may be immense but, in the last analysis, they are not that large in number in the crucial swing states) So I am 'calling' this election for Donald Trump and I think there are quite a lot of little straws in the wind that indicate that this may be the case - I would very much like to be proved wrong but we shall see as the results of the election gradually dribble out over the days.
I had cooked a ham joint in our slow cooker but decided to do a little bit of experimental cooking for the veg to accompany it. I had previously bought a big bag of carrots so I down loaded a BBC recipe how to do honey glazed carrots by roasting them in the oven first. So having doused them in olive oil pepper and salt I then cooked them for half an hour before spreading a mixture of lemon juice and honey over them and finishing off with a sprinkling of thyme (from a jar I already had in stock) The results were quite pleasing but not outstanding. In the past, I am pretty sure I have achieved equally good results by transferring some carrots cut into batons, then boiled and finished off in some oil to which some honey is added at the last moment. What I did this morning was quite a deal of work without the commensurate increase in pleasure in eating the final product.
The big political event this week will be Rachel Reeve's budget which has been trailed for weeks now. There was a time when it was absolutely out of order for budget secrets to be revealed before they were announced to Parliament but a bad habit seems to have crept in whereby some of the budget items are revealed in the days beforehand. We now know as a cast iron certainty that National Insurance on Employers contributions is set to rise. Also, it looks as though another what is termed a 'stealth' tax will be in place by not allowing allowances before tax to rise in line with inflation. So we have a process known as fiscal drag in which people actually pay more tax and also get dragged into higher tax brackets even though the rates of tax have not risen. The public as a whole may have thought that no more money was going to be extracted from them via income tax but for many people will find that they are actually paying more tax owing to the non-indexation of allowances even though the rate of tax itself has not been altered. At the time of the Budget, a large booklet of financial data is released at the time the budget is delivered and often there are some technical changes in this booklet which may impact upon some tax payers but it does not necessarily figure in the Budget speech itself or even the many discussions that take place after it. So the airwaves will be filled with Budget news next Wednesday and probably for several days after that as well.
© Mike Hart [2024]