Stuart's Scribbles

My father died back in May 2022. Not from Covid. He spent his last few days in a care home next to my mother. He did not want a funeral so we did not have a “wake” or anything like that. However, my sisters decided to hold a birthday party for him on 27th August when he would have been 92. So we all got together for a wee drink and eat, looked at photos of him in his National Service uniform, wedding photo, an anniversary photo and other with various children, grandchildren and great grandchild. I’ve posted some of my photo’s with him below.

When is a resignation speech not a resignation? When it’s given by Boris Johnson. All the media yesterday were going on about his resignation but, he did not use the word resignation in his statement. Nor did he use the phrase “standing aside”.

What he actually said as: “It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister.” That is neither of the above. He goes on to say: “And I’ve today appointed a Cabinet to serve, as I will, until a new leader is in place.” He hasn’t resigned and he hasn’t left office. He is going to carry on.

I’m happy not to have my birthday acknowledged by people who know me. Only my sisters have sent birthday cards. Nothing from anyone else who knows me. I’m happy being “billy no mates” today, I’m free to do whatever I want. Just a few text messages.

Will Boris ever get his jotters?

Will Putin get his?

Trump may have got his but he doesn’t stop and still infests the US with his bile.

I mentioned to one of my pen pals in a letter yesterday in response to something she said. No I don’t believe the cost of living crisis is about Ukraine. A lot of it here in the UK is mainly because of Brexit. Supply chain shortages because of problems at the borders and the pandemic. Fewer staff in the hospitality industry is because of Brexit and the pandemic. Problems at airports and airlines is Brexit and pandemic. Yes these have been compounded by Putin’s reckless intervention in Ukraine but to blame everything on that is misleading. Some of these problems pre-data that.

Wimbledon is over for me. It’s not just Andy’s loss but also Emma. She didn’t look her usual self yesterday, as though she wasn’t ‘in the zone’, there was no spark in her play, although she tried to make a fight of it the willingness just wasn’t there for me. I’ve not much interest in the rest of this tennis event.

Sewage water treatment can be used to find out what viruses or other illness may be in the community. Who Knew? Apparently this monitoring has been done for many years. I started to hear about it with Sars-Cov-2 and more recently with polio being detected. When they find stuff like this in the main treatment plant indicating an area of a town where the infection might be, the authorities then have to look more closely at sub treatment plants to try and define the area more closely. Once that’s done they can target the streets feeding into that plant and start checking people in houses and other buildings – proper track and trace type stuff.

East Lothian Liberal Democrats are in a mess. The last meeting of it’s Executive Committee was in April this year. There have been no meetings since the elections in May. The last communication to members only was in the run-up to the AGM last year. There has been no comms by email or post letting members know who the new office bearers are.

There are no plans to campaign. I have tried to alert them to possible migration from our current web-site and bulk email system. I mentioned costs would increase from £17 p/m to £45 p/m as a “development party”. That caused concern from the Treasurer. I raised several points over the costs but the key people haven’t responded. I am not taking the migration any further.

I could, in theory, start campaigning myself at my own cost but need to sort out leaflets first. I’m still thinking about it. It would give me something to do. I am not going to be chasing the local party to do anything, just sit on my hands and wait.