Trumps Tariffs Test Friend's Mettle. Calais Port Issue Tenfold Worse than Irish Brexit Border. Fake News Beats Truth

"You wanna by my friend, don't you!" is effectively the message issued by President Trump's imposition of tariffs of 10% on aluminium and 25% on steel imports. So far Canada and Mexico have been excluded from the tariffs. Apparently, the President will also make concessions to true friends. Should be interesting. At least the decision is received positively in some areas of the US, a good move if you are planning for a second term in office.

The President had removed the US from the Pacific free trade negotiations. Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam signed up to the The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), covering a market of 500 million people and 13% of the global economy.

Meeting with the EU's Donald Tusk, the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar,  piled on the pressure on the UK negotiating team, emphasising that Ireland needed to know the fall-back position to establish a “common regulatory area” between the island of Ireland and the 26 other EU states would apply of no open border solution could be achieved.

The Border with Ireland? Calais would be 10 times worse, claimed the boss of the port of Calais, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, who stated that permanent 20 mile long tailbacks were likely on a border. He helpfully added “At the moment, 70% of food imported comes from the EU. Even if that goes down to 50% after Brexit because of controls, it still needs to flow smoothly; people still need to eat. If there are delays it could end up rotting on the side of the road.”

Spent a whole day with a good friend and author from microscopy tackling a revised issue of his book we originally prepared in 2009/2010. Even with archive files retained  since then, it was a painstaking formatting and proofing exercise. We are halfway through, another session in the future beckons.

There was still an hour before we were to set off this evening to our German 'Stammtisch' with friends, with nothing to take along. Used the time to make another batch of soft oaty biscuits, accidently with half the sugar, which still tasted fine - possibly due to the substitution of cocoa fat for half the amount of butter required. An enjoyable evening with a great apple sponge cake and an aside conversation on macro-photography of insects, including lepidoptera.

One of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett would be smiling wryly about the shock revelation that fake news travels faster through the social media than real news. His excellent book on journalism and the search for truth, aptly named "The Truth" featured the saying 'A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.' Mind you, the original quote has been attributed to famous people from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill.