Wonderful to see Elvis Costello at Blenheim Palace  this month (my birthday treat). Nick Lowe was an excellent supporting act was on top form, as were The Waterboys.  Such magnificent surroundings to see these guys.  Stayed locally in a very nice hotel built out of Costwold Stone. After a fine breakfast the next morning we met with the kids in Oxford who’d caught the train from Guildford and enjoyed a day of sightseeing around the beautiful old city.  What a wonderful weekend.

Things have been heating up in the UK this month after the hottest May since records began in 2018.

EU Withdrawal Bill was rejected by the House of Lords earlier in the month. An attempt by Conservative MPs to prevent us leaving the EU without a deal is defeated in a House of Commons vote 319 to 303.   The House is divided down the middle, as is the country.   Recently realised that, at last, I’ve stopped waking up thinking that Brexit is just a bad dream and everything as all fine and back to normal….. I haven’t had that dream for a couple of months or so.

Oh… the 3rd runway plans for Heathrow were finally approved by the Government. What an epic saga that decision has been. Good to reach a decision on such a critical piece of infrastructure. Sadly, about 10 days later the Government rejects a much more environmentally friendly proposal to build the Tidal Lagoon in Swansea. What a misguided decision that is….. what is it that people don’t understand about climate change?

World Cup kicked off in Russia on 14th June with the home side beating Saudi Arabia 5-0.  Here we go again.

We took the kids up to the Anti Brexit march in Central London on Saturday 23rd. 100,000 people turned out for it in Central London.  All quite peaceful but remainers are getting much more vocal now. The new catchy slogan on the streets is ‘Bollocks to Brexit’.

On the global scene, we had a volcanic eruption in Guatamala killing over a hundred and injuring hundreds more, reminding some of us how relatively thin and fragile the Earth’s crust actually is.

Mid-month we were all subjected to images of Trump masquerading as a global peace broker in Singapore with Kim Jong-un at a  North Korean – US summit, reported to be ‘signing a deal’ for the denuclearisation of the North Korean Peninsula.  Let’s wait and see how effective that is.

True to current form, the US have now announced it will withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council.   Query 1: What is the next global agreement they can wreck. Query 2: What kind of a statesman is Trump?