Stupidity & Trump's Independence Day Speech

America has been an independent nation for 250 years. It's founding fathers were immigrants from all over the world, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden & Russia. There were over 1,000 native American tribes in North & South America when colonisation began. More than 500 in North America. The indigenous peoples were not treated well, both in the Americas & other colonised countries.

The USA celebrated Independence Day on the 4th of July. Trumps speech was the usual long, rambling, jingoistic, self aggrandising, monologue. He believes he single handedly revived a diminished USA that is now celebrating its founding through his unmatched presidency - Really?? 

According to the Washington Post "A recent Gallup Poll found that national pride has fallen to its lowest point since the organisation began asking in 2001 how proud respondents were to be an American. Just 33%  reported being “extremely proud,” down eight percentage points from a year ago and 37 points since a high in 2003. The partisan gap is wide, with Republicans reporting much higher American pride while Democrats and independents have hit record lows." Trumps speech made everything about him, even though he paraded war veterans as old as 107 who saluted from wheelchairs, astronauts from the Artemis II and Apollo 17 missions, and families of soldiers killed in battle. 

Trump claims Americans are "the best & the bravest people the world has ever produced". They are " the finest people on the planet". They are "citizens of every race, religion, colour & creed - one people, one family." America is "the worlds most strongest & powerful nation., & has the greatest military anywhere." He claimed that America "liberate(d) Europe & defeat(ed) Nazi fascism forever." American marines "saved the world." Also at the Berlin Wall "America finally brought communism crashing down to an end." He celebrated America's "unmatched achievements & unlimited potential". He claimed that America is the "oldest constitutional republic on earth". Unfortunately he obviously hasn't heard about San Marino which dates back to 1600.

America's destiny is written by god according to Trump. Presumably he is gods messenger on earth. 

It's all bombastic rhetoric. Very little that comes out of his mouth has any basis in truth. He is an 80 year old child seeking approbation. But he is also an 80 year old bully who is addicted to money & power. He was democratically voted into power by Americans who fell under the spell of glitz, glitter & the best PR money could buy. 

 

The cost of the 4th of July celebrations is said to be multi millions. Just the firework display estimated cost was $1.6million. Now we are all paying the price for Trump's excesses - Nero supposedly fiddling while Rome burns springs to mind.  

Migration

The world is ocean & land. There are barriers to travel, but there are no actual borders. Every living thing has the capacity to migrate. Plants set seeds & move across the earth. Birds fly across oceans to other landfall. I remember being in Kenya watching the annual Great Wildebeest Migration, one of the most spectacular natural events on Earth. Driven by weather and the search for fresh grazing, over 1.5 million wildebeest, alongside hundreds of thousands of zebras and gazelles, make an arduous 1,800-mile round trek between the Serengeti in Tanzania and the Masai Mara in Kenya. 

 

This movement is to find better conditions for life. Better habitats & ecosystems. It's all about survival, not just of the fittest, but everybody, whatever their race, religion or culture. 

Humans are not exempt from this basic urge to optimise the conditions under which they live. But humans want to control. Humans take defining their territory to extremes. They have maps with artificial country boundaries. They build walls & fences. They have laws. They defend their territory against incomers.

 

As I have aged I have become more & more aware of the futility of this. We are fighting against our own kind. We are literally dehumanising ourselves in order to protect our own small piece of "property". But we don't own the land we stand on, whether it is our home or our country. We are simply the current tenants. We die, the land & ocean remain in perpetuity.

We differentiate between refugees & migrants. Some are acceptable, some aren't. If they are persecuted & / or have skills we want, they are higher up in the pecking order. If they are economic migrants, young & male they are at the bottom. We choose who we will help & who we won't.

I do understand the complexities of the mass migrations we have seen due to war, disaster & economic failure. I also understand the argument that we in the UK are at the end of a long migration route during which migrants travel through other "safe" countries. I understand that our landmass is significantly smaller that France, Germany or Turkey for example. It can be argued that the UK has less capability to accommodate thousands of migrants. 

But, & it's a big but, we, in the so called "developed world," have things that others don't. Above all we have security & democracy. We have relatively sophisticated infrastructure - water, electricity, food security, education, healthcare, a justice system....These things may well have flaws, but they work relative to poor countries.or counties ravaged by war & disaster.

Surely our basic humanity, whether we are religious or not, means that we should share? We should not pass by on the other side. We should be "good Samaritans"?

There is no simple answer. It requires international cooperation of the countries receiving the migrations to equally share the burden. It also requires the problems at source to be tackled effectively. 

At the moment we are doing neither.  

Regret & Public Inquiries

To an extent regret is pointless. You can only regret something you have or haven't done or said. It's the past, regret can't change it. But you can apologise. You can try to put things right. You can acknowledge that you have made a mistake or caused hurt or real harm.

I can think of many things that I regret over my 80 years. I'm fallible, I make mistakes. Some I'm not prepared to mention here. I do think I could have been less judgemental at times. I could have been less volatile, less emotional. I think I did my best as a parent, but I could undoubtedly have done better by today's safeguarding standards. I certainly think I could have tried to understand my parents better & been a less difficult teenager. On the whole I hope I was fairly average, but there are sins due to thoughtlessness, being headstrong & convinced I was right. I was, & am still very intolerant of unfairness. I always wanted to reform people or organisations I thought didn't operate fairly or effectively.

Hopefully I haven't done anyone any real harm.

What I find difficult to understand is why many people today are incapable of expressing regret, can't admit they are wrong, don't take responsibility for mistakes. It applies to politicians for example, very few resign when they probably should. The NHS seems much more willing to try to cover up mistakes until they are forced to admit them by public inquiries. Maternity services have had 3 major inquiries - Ockenden, Kirkup & Morecambe Bay, plus 2 Systematic reviews. How many does it need for something to actually be done to put things right?

There are 5 ongoing UK Public Inquiries this year covering healthcare & security. UK public inquiries usually last 2 - 5 years. Major ones can last 5 -13 years. The average cost of a UK public inquiry is £17.4 million. It can be more. The taxpayer spends over £200 million per annum on active inquiries & the figure is increasing.

Why? Well Inquiries are heavily adversarial and run by top-tier lawyers, barristers, and judges whose hourly rates dominate the budget. They must be the only people who benefit. Also data & administration costs are massive. Sifting through hundreds of thousands of WhatsApp messages, emails, and physical corporate documents requires expensive digital forensic infrastructure. It all takes time & add to the huge cost.

I'm not saying we shouldn't find out what has gone wrong. I am saying that all of this money could be better spent if we had a culture of admitting mistakes & trying to put things right. But we have followed the American model of litigation, so people are afraid of being sued if they do something wrong. Personal liability means that individuals & whole departments cover up. 

I'm really tired of hearing that "we must make sure this never happens again". It doesn't work. History repeats itself over & over again. We have to accept that things do go wrong. The important thing is to improve & put in more safeguards each time they do.

 

Public Inquiries are thought to be no longer fit for purpose. So we need to find a better way, because the public feel that they can only get at the truth through an Inquiry & the truth matters. To everyone.  

Emergencies

A sudden, unexpected, unforeseen and dangerous situation that threatens health, life, property, or the environment and requires immediate action to prevent worsening results. For example - a medical crisis, fires, toxic fumes or gases, natural disasters, violent crimes....

In a well run society there will be emergency first responders who act quickly to deal with the situation. There will be protocols that those responders adhere to in order to be as efficient as possible. They will be well equipped. They will hopefully be as well trained as possible to cope with very difficult situations. There will be hospitals ready to care for the injured - In an ideal world.

But we don't live in an ideal world.

We live in an unstable & volatile world, fraught with war & severe political unrest & mismanagement. We in the UK are relatively lucky. For all of the failings of decades that have led to the situation today, we are still a functioning reasonably democratic state.

That isn't true of a country like Venezuela. Despite vast oil & mineral reserves it is economically impoverished with widespread poverty. It is also one of the most politically corrupt nations of the world -  A dictatorship under Maduro. More than 7 million Venezuelans fled the country, one of the largest migration crises in the world.

Now Venezuela is dealing with exceptional earthquakes on Wednesday - tremors of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck within 39 seconds of each other west of the capital Caracas. 235 are known to be dead, but that will rise. 40,000 are missing & 4,300 are known to be injured. All those figures will rise.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-earthquake-caracas-terremoto-death-toll-map-live-b3003427.html 

I cannot imagine the horror of living in a failed state, enduring such a catastrophic disaster, when the emergency services simply don't exist. There will undoubtedly be aftershocks. UK charities are asking for donations from the generous public to help & I'm sure they will get money. Charities like ShelterBox have already decided to sent teams out to Venezuela despite the undoubted danger they will face. They send out emergency shelter & basics for displaced people & have a huge amount of experience in situations like this. 

 

 https://shelterboxusa.org/welcome/

Charities like ShelterBox need our support as do the people facing emergencies.  

 

Heatwave

I remember lying out in the sun for hours sunbathing & developing a tan. I also remember sunburn. Eventually it dawned on me that keeping a tan required time & dedication & there were better things to do with my time. We also became aware that UV light is dangerous to health, especially if, like me, you had auburn hair & fair skin. 

Now I dread very hot weather. It is a real trial - I simply can't cope with it. I have to remain indoors in the coolest, darkened, room. Even then I am acutely uncomfortable because the weather exacerbates all my medical conditions. Nights in a heatwave are even more sleepless than usual. 

I am not alone. It is not just a question of discomfort. People die. There were 1,311 heat-associated deaths during the 4 heat episodes in the summer of 2024. Somehow you don't associate good weather with illness & death. Despite a pacemaker, I am acutely aware of the effect of any exertion. It's exhausting. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-2024/heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-2024

The UK isn't adapted for extreme heat. Mediterranean counties are, but even they struggle. The US has air con everywhere.

Europe has adapted to excess heat through widespread infrastructural retrofits, urban greening & mandatory heat health action plans. Cities use passive cooling, such as cool roofs and shaded green infrastructure. Meanwhile, healthcare systems have scaled up early warning systems to dramatically reduce heatwave mortality. Cities have increased tree canopy cover, converted asphalt to permeable surfaces, & installed green roofs - Even green bus stops to lower ambient temperatures. Europeans have adapted labour laws & modified outdoor working hours, have shaded breaks & suspended heavy physical labour. School timetable are different.

The European Environment Agency has just published a report looking at climate risk & resilience.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/news/extreme-weather-and-uneven-climate-adaptation-challenge-europes-resilience  

The UK is really not ready for this. We are being catapulted into a situation that Europe, particularly the Mediterranean countries, have taken years to adapt to. Climate Change needs to be at the top of any government agenda. The trouble is there are so many other serious issues. Not least the threat of war with Russia & other rogue nations. Then there is Poverty, Housing, the NHS & Social care, Privatised utilities etc....

Who would be a politician today? There are no easy answers & there certainly isn't any money unless we all pay more & ask for less. 

  

 

 

Unpopularity

Childhood & teenage are often full of insecurities. We want to be liked. We want to be in the "in crowd" part of a group. We think that as we become adults that all disappears, but it doesn't. No one really wants to be unpopular, an outsider. However brave a face we put on it we all want to belong throughout our lives. We are social animals.

But the thing is if we simply follow the herd, if we agree with untenable opinions in order to avoid confrontation & exclusion, we sell a part of our soul. As adults we should be able to deal with different opinions, arguments, confrontations in a calm & rational way. We should not be passive, we should have the courage of our convictions. Even if that means that we risk unpopularity & exclusion.

Politics is a dirty business. The temptation is to want the impossible in a leader - charisma, decisiveness, understanding of complex issues, speedy ability to always make the right decisions, never changing your mind.....It's ridiculous. No one can live up to such unrealistic expectations. So the MP's turn on you & the masses bray for your destruction. It becomes a gladiatorial fight to the death. 

According to the Institute for Government "Political churn in the UK refers to the rapid turnover of Prime Ministers, cabinet ministers, and civil servants, exacerbated by weakened voter loyalties. The instability has sparked debates about whether systemic dysfunction makes the UK ungovernable". There have been 6 prime ministers in the UK in the last decade & we are on course for a 7th. Almost half of all senior cabinet posts have had as many people fill the role since the 2019 election as they had in the previous nine years. 7 chancellors of the exchequer. 7 Home Secretaries. It's become the norm & it cannot be a good thing. 

Our politicians have become disposable at the whim of unpopularity.

 

Running a country demands intelligence, experience, good qualified advisors & information, ability to see the big picture & make informed decisions. It isn't a beauty contest. It requires a lot of characteristics that seem to be in short supply. We are in the age of superficiality & instant gratification. We, the public, are volatile & easily led. Particularly by misinformation & personality cults. That is not a recipe for good governance.

Keir Starmer is allegedly very unpopular. He has undoubtedly made mistakes, but would you do any better? I think not. Shouldn't everyone be allowed to make mistakes as long as they acknowledge them & put them right. What we need is integrity. I'm sure that both Streeting & Burnham think they can do a better job & maybe they can. But they will undoubtedly become unpopular at some point. 

Will we just change them too? Is that the solution? Is that what the country need in such unstable times? We put a "Best Before" or "Sell By" date on our food. Seemingly now we do the same with out politicians too.

Internet & Social Media

I use a lot of technology in my life. I have a smart phone, an iPad, a laptop & a desktop. I also have 2 Alexa Echo Shows, (one in the kitchen & one in my bedroom) & a Ring doorbell. In fact my life is on my technology. I would probably miss appointments & forget where I was meant to be without it. I would forget things I need to do. My short term memory is fading into the morass of data in my brain.

So I am a fan. I play solitaire & mah jong on my iPad to keep my brain working. I communicate through my Blog. (It's less weird than talking to myself). I use Alexa to listen to radio & to time my cooking. She is linked to my calendar & prompts me about appointments. I WhatsApp, use Facebook & Twitter. I email & I research online. AI is a boon as long as you realise it's limitations. I have a "to do" list on my phone & other files with information.

I have never been on the Dark Web, looked at pornography or dubious websites as far as I know. If I am researching I do spend a lot of time going from link to link, but I only use verifiable websites. I don't feel the need for a VPN. 

My point is that the internet & social media is a tool that I think I use sensibly. I can differentiate between evidence based content & drivel. I can recognise dubious conspiracy theories & AI generated rubbish. But I am an adult who has used computers for decades. I am not naive. I am not a child, a teenager or vulnerable. My brain is fully developed & backed up by years of experience of the world.

Crucially, I am hopefully not addicted. My phone is turned off overnight & dormant for long periods during the day. It isn't always in my hand or pocket. I do not feel compelled to constantly scroll & check. My phone knows it's place in my life. I know where the off switch is on all my hardware. 

I don't feel that is true of so many people today. Not just children & teenagers. A day does not go past without I see people walking, looking at their phones instead of where they are going. I even see people looking at their phones riding a bike. People look at phones in social situations. People have private conversations publicly on buses & trains - loudly. We seem to have accepted that the mobile phone should take precedence over everything else in our lives. People are addicted & get withdrawal symptoms if they can't use their phones. It's sad.

So why should our children be any different when adults are such bad role models? We have not only allowed our children to become addicted to mobile phones & social media, we have actively encouraged them to do that by example. We opened the Pandora's Box. Yes, the Tech Bro's are responsible for the platforms with all their failings. But we allowed them to do it. 

So we are now having to try to navigate away from the undoubted harms we created. The UK is going to block social media for under 16's. I will watch with interest how that goes. The words horse, stable door & bolted, spring to mind. Parents need to be parents. But that has now become far more difficult in the age of technology.