The North Korean mood music changes to frosty with an abrupt cancellation of talks with South Korea and a warning that the meeting with President Trump might be called off. The reason was the beginning of two weeks of joint air exercises between the South Koreans and the US, something the North Koreans have always accused of being preparations for an invasion of the North. The US currently stays pofaced, simply stating that they have not heard anything from North Korea on the issue of the Presidents meeting and continues to plan for the event.
The death of 60 palestinians, resulted in a repeat of past stalled debates on the Israel-Palestinian question. The US fully supported Israel, whilst the UK reiterated its commitment to the two state solution.
In an attempt to show that progress was being made, despite all the talk of a deadlock on Brexit in the British cabinet, the Prime Minister's promised a white paper on her priorities for Britain’s future relationship with the European Union, to be released in June, before the critical meeting with the EU. Hopefully, a solution acceptable to the EU will be found in the next 30 days or so.
Meanwhile, the Scottish MP voted in their parliament for a cross party rejection of the UK government’s EU withdrawal bill by 93 votes to 30. The stumbling block is that the UK parliament wants control of regulations currently held by the EU to initially fall back to it on Brexit, rather than allowing the powers to go to the devolved parliaments.
Today we had another installment of the adventures of BT internet and phone repair saga. It started when the neighbours began having problems with their internet. The first hole was dug by the contractors, by the lamp post. This remained open for several days till the engineer arrived. Unfortunately the hole was in the wrong place, as evidenced by photographs of previous holes from past telecoms malfunctions, thoughtfully retained on our computer.
The digging contractors returned on a separate day and dug the second hole in the correct place and temporarily filled in the first hole. Again the hole remained open for several days till, during the time of torrential downpours, the BT engineer came to effect repairs on the neighbour's line. The contractors returned and filled both holes properly. The neighbour's internet problem had not been resolved and now our telephone line had developed a severe crackle.
I called in the fault, the automated tests by BT over the phone did not detect a problem. I still requested an engineer to come, with the risk that we would have to pay if it was an in house fault. Several days passed. The engineer arrived and first ended up at the neighbours, confirming that they had a fault. He then came to use and established that we had a fault and that it was in the same location of the neighbours fault, the last filled hole. The engineer took profuse notes and attached them to his report and departed.
The contractors returned and started digging the wrong hole till directed to the correct spot by us. The hole was open for a period of time. An engineer returned, without any of the information generated by the previous engineer. He repaired our line but possibly not the neighbour's, and left. However, he established that we still had a residual fault and marked a new area on the pavement close to our house, it could be that we will be having our own hole soon.
Meanwhile, waiting for his repair, the neighbour called BT to point out the potential hazard of the new existing hole: the plate covering it was barely big enough to cover the deep hole and was at risk of falling in (with anyone or any vehicle passing over it).
Today, the contractors returned and filled in the hole promptly. As they drove away from the site down our road, they passed a BT engineer coming in the opposite direction to arrive on the neighbour's drive. Finding the hole filled and after a phonecall on his smartphone, he departed.
We now wait to see how the saga continues!
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