There is a story that is circulating which I read with a certain amount of dismay. Given the whirlwind start. that Trump has brought to his presidency, a reporter had ventured into Pennsylvania (which was a crucial swing state) to see what the public at large made of the first 50 days. What the reporter found was that people were delighted, the most common comment being was 'that he is rattling the cage and making a real change' Trump's lies were readily believed such as the claim that a 165 year old women was in receipt of a pension and when the reporter indicated that this claim was false and had been debunked, the response was 'Well, there is probably fake news on both sides' In the meanwhile, the stock market is crashing and inflation is set to rise but the impact of the imposition of tariffs is hard to gauge because having introduced them, Trump has immediately put on pause the two most important walls against Canada and Mexico. One does get the feeling that the Trump presidency is bound to crash and burn and here are already all kinds of legal challenges to the mass firings but it is unclear as I write whether these will be obeyed or just ignored until they get to the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, I was a little puzzled because the media was observing the 5th anniversary of the COVID pandemic. I knew that the anniversary was fast approaching because next Monday on the 17th of March, this blog will be exactly 5 years old and I started it the day before the lockdown. But the date of 9th March was the day when the pandemic was officially declared and the actual first lockdown started a few days later and hence the discrepancy. There were many stories of utter sadness as relatives waved goodbye to their loved ones as they went to hospital where many of them died, The case was highlighted of one man with an oxygen saturation of 58 (it should be 95%) and he was given the option of an induced coma with a 50% chance of survival or to not have the treatment and have a 0% chance of survival. He chose the induced coma which lasted for over 40 days, and he emerged alive but minus the hearing in one ear and the sight of one eye. In some ways, it seems hard to believe that we actually survived all of that, but Meg and I walked down to the park every day to get a lot of fresh air (and to boost our immune systems) and were scrupulous in our mask wearing and social distancing. The enquiry into all of this is still proceeding and will still take years let and one wonders whether any real lessons have actually been learnt. We know already, though, that a lot of the Tory party friends made a lot of money supplying dodgy PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) a lot of which was subsequently destroyed having been supplied to the government at a premium price.
We experienced two 'social' events yesterday, both heart-warming in themselves. Firstly, our University of Birmingham friend came around as he often does on a Sunday morning, and we had a wonderful gentle conversation chatting over politics and other things as well as listening to some superb renditions of baroque music courtesy of YouTube. Then in the middle of the afternoon, two neighbours, who live in the recently constructed houses next to us, called around to see how I was faring. They had observed me pushing Meg out in the wheelchair and were solicitous about my welfare. I said they must call around for a coffee some afternoon. when we could have a more extended conversation rather than simply on the doorstep. As it is a couple of weeks since the would-be county council councillor had called and to whom I had intimated my concerns about Worcestershire County Council but no action had been forthcoming But my original email of complaint (which I have re-read and am still pleased by its succinctness and directness) has been forwarded to the Director of Finance so it will be interesting to see what, if anything, will emerge from this quarter. A complaint forwarded by a county councillor though carries a bit more 'clout' but of course it will take days to investigate, then to consider what course of action to take and then to reply. I am requesting not a 'refund' but a 'mitigation' of the 7-month delayed direct debit, but one lives in hope.
Yesterday morning, I made my main task to get in touch with the Occupational Therapy team to see if they could suggest some more specialist wheelchair straps to keep Meg and her wheelchair united. This took a couple of phone calls to get through to the right people and after a referral was made, I am awaiting a phone call to discuss with the team what needs to be done. This may take some days but in the meantime, I am hopeful that my home-made solutions will work. I cooked some chicken legs for lunch but Meg could only eat some of it before I had to abandon efforts to feed her any more. Then for the whole, of the afternoon we watched a superb production of Mozart's opera 'Così van Tutte' provided by the Vienna State Opera House. The production was sumptuous in the extreme and the singing divine and what was particularly interesting was that subtitles were provided both in Italian (what was being sung at the time) and also in English - and I have never seen this done before.
The American economy seems to be in a Trump-induced freefall at the moment. A little earlier, Sky News gave a bleak analysis of the US economy, with one economic indicator suggesting it was shrinking at its fastest pace since the pandemic. Things are hardly looking up after markets opened a short while ago, with Wall Street's main indexes falling amid fears a trade war could spark an economic slowdown. The tech-heavy Nasdaq and the benchmark S&P 500 were at near five-month lows after falling 1.3% and 2.03%, respectively. The Trump team will deny, of course, that this is anything to do with them but we are told constantly that the business community needs a stable environment to operate effectively, and this is the last thing we have with tariffs imposed one day and removed a day or so later. Trump trades upon the fact that he was a 'successful' businessman but some of wealth was generated by chicanery and fraud and, of course, he was convicted of false accounting by a New York court.
© Mike Hart [2025]