• Crocodile

What’s happened is that Putin has seen that Trump has set himself unrealistic goals. Ending the war in 24 hours, as Trump claimed, was always going to be an easy one to disprove. Since then, carrying on as usual has suited Putin very well. Trump has divided his allies and, in so doing, given encouragement to his enemy. Any student of WW2 will know that they underestimate Russia’s ability to absorb punishment at their peril.

As I’ve suggested before, if you start from the position that the break-up of the USSR was the biggest geo-political disaster of the twentieth century and that the regime in Ukraine is suspect (i.e. “fascist”) because it has pro-west leanings, as Putin does, then his stance is logical. Western views about international law, post-1989 settlements and the UN are beside the point.

This is a basic, xenophobic, nationalistic and ruthless motivation we’re dealing with. If the Baltic states and other former USSR possessions aren’t worried then they ought to be.

At 72 years old, and with an almost total grip on his country, Putin is probably good for at least another ten years. How much of this is his own personal mission I’m not qualified to say. When he finally leaves the scene, who’s to say that there’s not an even more serious hardass waiting to take over this vast country. Russian history has been full of them.

• Size

This leads me to another thought, which I shall leave dangling for now.

It seems that the likelihood of any state developing a system of representative democracy is in inverse proportion to its size. Just looking back at the last five hundred years, Russia, China, India and the various Islamic empires and states were vast and yet didn’t do it. Athens, England, the Netherlands and (as it then was) the USA were small, and yet did.

I make no claim about which approach for ruling is preferable and am reminded of Churchill’s remark that democracy is the worst system of all, apart from all the others. None the less, through having lived in a stable democracy my entire life, I’m pre-disposed in its favour: as, no doubt, are others about their systems. None the less, I can’t help feeling pleased that no one is going to break our door down should I happen to criticise it. This is, perhaps, what the fight is about in Ukraine.

• Brexit

The Week reports that Keir Starmer hailed a “new era” in relations with Europe this week after the UK and Brussels agreed a post-Brexit “reset”. Opinions have differed on some of the details but the main advantage seems to me that the UK will continue to abide by EU food standards. Anything that Italy, France and Spain regard as being good practice in this regard tests higher with me than what the USA thinks. Punitive sanctions – perhaps for a day,  perhaps for for four years – may follow from Washington.

Some of the comments about this deal, which wouldn’t have been necessary were we still to have been in the EU, made me realise just how alive the Brexit debate still is. I get that it didn’t turn out the way I hoped. The simple stay/leave option, however, has proved to be anything but.

What I really object to is the idea that we’re somehow more free as a result of our decision. An example of this is from The Daily Telegraph, quoted in The Week, that “Starmer is ceding our independence in this area, just when we’re starting to capitalise on the benefits of being able to forge our own path.” Our own path to what? To adopting US food standards?  It’s now nearly ten years since the hapless David Cameron caved in to pressure to ask a question, to which he didnlt know the answer, to save his party from collapse – that didn’t work – by holding a referendum.

• Referendums

What awful things these are. The Swiss seem to have them about every twenty minutes. Thank goodness we don’t.

Last time I checked, we elect governments – and local councils –to make decisions. The claim that the public should decide is trotted out if this suits the need of the party calling the referendum. As matters showed before, during and – in particular – after that ghastly campaign, something so important can’t be reduced to a binary choice on which a few demagogues can influence public opinion. If David Cameron was foolish in allowing the referendum to happen, he was far more culpable in running such an ineffective campaign.

The other point is that the 2016 referendum had nothing to do with expressing the will of the people and everything to do with trying to heal wounds in the Conservative party. Each referendum, or election, costs the state about £130m. We’ll say nothing about the money that Theresa May had to pay the creationists in Northern Ireland for their support after her disastrous 2017 election. However, I’d like to see an invoice for £260m presented to Tory HQ to cover these fiascos. I’m not holding my breath.

The reality is that the severance, or rapprochement, with the EU continues. I’ve seen no beneficial dividends from our having left the EU in a huff, slamming the front door behind us. Now we’re trying, or so some claim, to crawl back in through the cat flap. Many fine minds have spent innumerable hours trying to solve the problems poised by Brexit. The recent announcements are part of this process. Those who believed that the result would produce some great new future for the country, freed from the shackles of a heavy-handed state, are in my opinion utterly deluded.

As for the business of trying to negotiate our departure and future relations, I’m reminded of Raymond Chandler’s description of chess as being “as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.” The slogan on the side of the bus about the NHS was probably conceived by an advertising agency, or by someone who now works in that world. God help us all…

• Water

The Guardian reports that Thames Water “has been hit with a record £104m fine over environmental breaches involving sewage spills, after failing to operate and manage its treatment works and wastewater networks effectively.”in addition to this is a “£18.2m fine for breaking dividend rules, the first of its kind in the industry, which was first reported by the Guardian in December. Ofwat said the company had paid out cash to investors despite having fallen short in its services to customers and its environmental record.”

The BBC added that Thames Water said the company took its “responsibility towards the environment very seriously.” Many will find this an astonishing statement and provides proof, if further proof be needed, of how far performance can fall short of press releases.

Two big questions remain. The first is what is going to happen to Thames Water. Nationalisation arguments have been hovering around all the water firms although, despite their nil value by many reckonings, political problems remain about taking them over. It would, after all, never do to spook the markets.

None the less, water is like air – though that’s something no one has, yet, found a way of owning – vital to our lives, even more than are railways and banks. For a government to provide this is thus surely amongst its primary concerns. However, how much better would nationalised water companies do? Decades of under-investment, the increasing demands of development and the problems of climate change will require massive and well-spent sums to combat.

Can we trust our rulers, who have a presided over a series of fiascos, including HS2 and a number of major IT projects, to do any better? Indeed, can any of us be trusted with something collective on this scale?

The other question is what’s going to happen to the money. There was a proposal a couple of years ago whereby environmental fines would be kept within that sector, rather than poured into the Treasury. I confess not to have kept up with what the policy is on this.

In a rational world, these sums should be paid (a) into a rang-fenced fund for repairs and investment, (b) to the Environment Agency and OfWat to strengthen their enforcement procedures and (c) to local riparian charities like Action for the River Kennet (numerous other ones exist elsewhere) who actually do something about repairing the damage. As the world is not rational, it’s possible that none of these things happen.

• Mending

According to the Reuse and Repair Declaration, the UK is “the second highest producer of electronic waste per capita in the world. Yet we are falling behind other countries in support for repair and reuse to tackle throwaway products. Repair and reuse are central to achieving a truly circular, less wasteful, economy. They help to tackle climate change and achieve our net zero ambition, reduce living costs for UK households and create green skilled jobs.”

Repairing has long been a neglected skill and, as the statement points out, there are several obstacles faced by those who want to get things fixed. Not the least of these is that many items are now deliberately designed to make them hard or impossible to get into. After all, there’s a new model out now which only costs £50 more and is shinier and brighter and with a bit of luck will not pack up before its replacement is in turn launched: and so it goes on. 

I’m not particularly good at fixing things. If WD40, superglue, duct tape or a large hammer won’t work then I’m a bit stumped. Fortunately there are now repair cafés across the country, including in Hungerford, Wantage, Thatcham and Newbury where experts can do the things I can’t.

The Repair and Reuse Declaration is trying to make it easier for such people to get inside these items. Have a look at the proposals and, if you agree, add your signature to the petition. 

• And finally…

• The BBC reports that the Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed for the first time “the full list of 21 charges Andrew and Tristan Tate will face when they are returned to the UK, including rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking. Good. As a heterosexual male I feel myself to be slightly degraded by the culture of misogyny and domination that they seem to represent.

This story has made me think back to what rubbish as a teenager I believed about women, people and life in general. I choose not to reflect on what even worse version of myself I might have become were such people to have got their claws into me. At that age, we’re ripe for the picking.

• The culprit of the horrible and seemingly drug-fuelled, rather then terrorist-related, incident in Liverpool at the football clubs’s champion’s parade was quickly revealed by the Police to have been a white male. This might have been a sensible defusement of a trope. However, there’s a price to be paid. Does that mean that if the ethnicity of a suspect is not announced within an hour or so that we can assume something else, and riot accordingly?

• We’ve decided to leave large parts of our garden wild, which you can interpret as anything from our being too lazy to mow and weed to creating a wonderful habitat for insects. For about six weeks in early summer, if we’re lucky, this pays dividends with a wonderful crop of bee-friendly flowers which also look lovely.

If you’re not careful, though, “no mow May” and “let it bloom June” can easily run into “why did we let it grow so high July”, when all these plants grow too tall, collapse and tangle together like the fur of an unkempt Persian cat. This year – the more so as everything has been advanced by several weeks because of the warm weather – we must have the strength of mind to cut back when the plants are in their prime.

• Football news to finish with. Chelsea won the Europa Conference League on Wednesday, beating Real Betis 4-1. A great week for London clubs, with Spurs having won the Europa League and Arsenal the big one of the women’s Champions League. Well done to all of them.

In the process, Chelsea accomplished two major achievements. The first was to be the only club to have won all four of the officially recognised UEFA competitions, including the now defunct Winners Cup. The second was ending a remarkable run of 27 consectutive international and club finals, going back to 2002, in which Spanish teams have been victorious. I was born in a hospital that overlooked Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge ground but have never supported them. However, now I have to extend to the club some sneaking admiration…

Across the area