One year ago, we went to the United States and stayed for a week with Mike & Laura in their home between Washington DC and Baltimore. You can read my account of the trip here.

This weekend, Vee and I repeated the visit to Dover since again Mike & Laura were over on the same cruise ship. They were very keen to discuss our recent holiday in Australia and New Zealand, because they want to visit those countries themselves, and they pored over the near 700 photos in our four albums. You can read an account of our holiday and view a much smaller selection of photos here.

We drove Mike & Laura over to the Battle of Britain Memorial at nearby Capel-le-Ferne. This has a wall listing all the 3,000 Royal Air Force pilots who fought in the Battle which includes Vee’s father the Czech Karel Kuttelwascher.

The famous white cliffs of Dover

Vee points out the name of her father

Globally we have to act decisively to slow down and then reverse CO2 levels in the atmosphere but, in the meanwhile if we do not act to mitigate the impacts of climate change, the cost – personal, societal and financial – will be catastrophic.

“I enjoyed your article about use of names until I reached the section on
Native American name usage in the US, in which you stated that very few
Native Americans remain in the US. In fact, according to the most recent census:

Out of the total U.S. population, 2.9 million people reported American Indian or Alaska Native alone. In addition, 2.3 million people reported American Indian or Alaska Native in combination with one or more other races. Together, these two groups totaled 5.2 million people. Thus, 1.7 percent of all people in the United States identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, either alone or in combination with one or more other races.

I think your misconception is one commonly found among Europeans, but that you would be glad to correct it.”

I am suitably chastised, I have corrected it, and I share my learning with you.

Since I was blogging about the trip each day, when I came home, I was able quickly to stitch together all the blog postings into a continuous narrative for my web site. It has taken me until today, however, to add all the photographs that I want to the account.

But now you can view 121 pictures here.

Your Paintings is a joint initiative between the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation (a registered charity) and participating collections and museums from across the UK. There are an estimated 212,000 oil paintings in the UK’s national collection.

You can check  out the site here.

The majority, about two-thirds, of the works of art in the collection are on display in Government buildings, while the rest is held at the GAC premises awaiting reselection and display. You can visit these premises by booking one of the regular evening group tours.

You can find out more here.

The Conservative Party is falling apart over the idea of a referendum on British membership of the European Union in 2017 and yet the negotiations promised by Prime Minster David Cameron have not even started and all the polling evidence is that understandably this issue is far from top of voters’ minds when they are facing a deep and prolonged economic recession.

This week, the splits in the Tory ranks will become especially manifest when there is a vote on an amendment to the Queen’s Speech seeking legislation now mandating a future referendum. There is no realistic possibility of such legislation reaching the statute book this side of a General Election and, even if such legislation were passed, it would probably have minimal impact on the Conservativews’ position in the polls.

Meanwhile, just to underline how British politics has gone into a spin, the latest opinion poll suggests that support for UKIP has soared from 9% to 18%. Clearly the publicity for UKIP and the aura of success has attracted a swath of new supporters – but it won’t last. Political parties build sustainable support by new personalties, new policies, improved organisation, and grass roots campaigning.

A doubling of support almost overnight is not sustainable. It is a bubble – and it will burst. Maybe not immediately. Maybe after some more madness and next year’s European elections when the proportional representation system of election will strongly favour UKIP.

Finally, ponder this thought. IF somehow UKIP was able to maintain a level of support of 18% and that support was spread evenly throughout England (they have very little support in Scotland and Wales and none in Northern Ireland) and IF the major parties performed as suggested in the latest poll, the result – thanks to our first past the post voting system – would according to one estimate be that the next parliament would end up with 228 Tory seats (down 79), 359 Labour (up 101, and enough for an overall majority of 68), 35 for the Lib Dems (implying 22 losses), and not a single seat for UKIP.

But none of this is going to happen.

This afternoon, I have a meeting with the Chief Executive and others from Ofwat, the water regulator. Ofwat is headquarted in Birmingham, but the workshop is in London, and it will convene representatives of the 20 regulated companies and the chairs of their Customer Challenge Groups. I shall be there as the independent Chair of the Customer Challenge Group at South East Water. We will be discussing the regulator’s price determination process for 2015-2020 and the role of companies and CCGs in producing business plans for the regulator’s examination.

Complex, but interesting, stuff this portfolio working.