Yesterday, Trump issued a slew of executive orders as he promised that h would. One was an order to rescind many of Joe Biden's own executive orders. Some of the most noteworthy are the following: -Pardoning the January 6th protestors who led the attack on the Capital Building 4 years ago ( and some 1500 o them at that, including some sentenced to more than 15 years for a 'seditious attack') -Many foreign policy announcements such as 'pardoning' Israeli citizens who have committed acts of violence against Palestinians living in the West Bank -Restoring the death penalty -Reinstating TikTok -Government and federal workers ordered back to work in the office -Cost of living to be made a priority -Gender and equality- only two sexes are recognised -Drug cartels declared to be terrorist organisations -World Health Organisation- intention to withdraw -Paris Climate Change agreement - America to withdraw
No doubt, there are many details that have been missed but that is quite enough to be going on with. Trump himself promised that he would be 'A dictator on Day 1' and has lived up to his promise. Many of the executive orders are of the type 'intention to' e.g., withdrawing from the WHO but when this is going to actually take effect will. no doubt unwinds in the hours and days ahead. I noticed with a degree of pleasure that Matthew Parris in 'The Times' has come out with both guns blazing, in effect saying that Donald Trump was the equivalent of dog excrement on one's shoe and should never be trusted. Meanwhile politicians of every hue including our own Foreign Secretary, David Lammie, are creeping up to Trump in a manner which suggests they are completely unprincipled and are subjecting themselves to American hegemony. In the meanwhile, Elon Musk has been condemned in the liberal media for giving what might be interpreted as a sort of Nazi salute, which admittedly is susceptible to a degree of interpretation. But Musk has allied himself with extremely right ring groups, individual (such as Tommy Robinson) and parties (such as Alternative to Democracy in Germany) Naturally this is dismissed as a liberal witch hunt against him but we are only on Day 1 of the Trump presidency and what else is to follow?
Today has been what you might call an 'itsy-bitsy' kind of day. The weather was fairly mild, even for January, and so I managed to get Meg down the hill and into Wetherspoons. There I indulged in an egg, cheese and bacon breakfast muffin with refillable drinks of hot chocolate - all for £3.77 which is about what we paid for one cup of coffee in Waitrose. Then after we got Meg back up the hlll there was a phone call from the doctor who was worried about Meg's sodium levels after her blood test yesterday. This is an indication that Meg needs hydration but I find it quite difficult to get fluids into Meg these days. However, the SALT (Speech and Language Therapist) gave me a very good tip yesterday which i think is working and that is to use a wide brimmed mug (of which just happen yo have one) instead of. feeding beaker as she thought that this might be easier. My first efforts in this direction have been more encouraging. Then I took delivery of a collection of Horlicks which I had ordered over the internet as I cannot obtain in either Aldi or Waitrose. The principal thing for which we were geared up this afternoon who eventually turned up at about 3.00pm.He took all o the detailed measurements and indicated that the job would be handed over to the insurance company designated repairers(s) as it is going to need a plaster skim in our dining room ceiling and practically the whole of the bottom half of our hall to be redecorated. The bad news from our point of view is that the leak might have been caused by the gnawing of a rodent and I did see a squirrel bouncing about on the roof in the autumn so we we are going to have to get a Pest Control firm to assess and get rid of any unwanted visitors before we have the roof checked over to see that there are no remaining points of ingress. My son and I think we might have a clue where an animal might have entered but I am having the partner of one of our carers and his mate who is a roofer by trade check over things. Before my son left his office we spent a certain amount of time accessing legacy accounts to see if we had any money left in them (which we don't). Finally the carers came 15 minutes earlier than they were scheduled so the whole afternoon was a bit messed up. I had made Meg a sort of kedgeree without meaning to but I may repeat the experiment. I poached some smoked haddock fillets in milk for 7 minutes and then removed the fish before adding some parsley sauce mixtures and bulking it up with powdered potato. I then returned the fish to the pot and broke it up into much smaller pieces (for Meg's benefit) before serving it up late in the afternoon with a baked potato and some green beans.
The political debate has centred this afternoon over the sequelae of the court appearance of the very disturbed adolescent responsible for the killing of three schoolgirls and wounding even more which happened in Southport in the summer. As the disturbed adolescent was known to several agencies, the question is raised whether the public should have been warned about this dangerous individual. But the government counter argument is that any prior release of information would have prejudiced a fair trial (and Keir Starmer as an ex Director of Public Prosecutions would have been very alert of the difficulties and dangers here) The government is now of the mind that a lone but evidently disturbed adolescent should be regarded as a 'terrorist' and treated as one. There are tremendously difficult areas of public policy involved here but I wonder if one practical suggestion would be if all of the concerned parties to put their fears and submissions before a judge who would then decide what kind of information should be released to the general public (informing them of potential dangers) without prejudicing a trial.
© Mike Hart [2025]