Brexit Minister releases first 25 'Preparing for a No Deal Brexit' papers. Trump unimpeachable.

cream on top of trifle

I joined a meeting of the South East Cambs For Europe last night, who are actively campaigning locally for a people's vote on the final brexit deal or even, heaven forbid, it looks like we are going for a no deal brexit.

The timing was appropriate as today, Dominic Raab, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, announced the release of the first 25 papers on how different sectors of the UKshould prepare for the event of a no deeal Brexit.

The elements required 'to mitigate risks' that caught my eye were:

• Businesses being asked to prepare for added administrative HMRC steps when WTO trade conditions set in for imports and exports.
• Pharmacies being asked to stock up with several weeks of medicines originating from the EU.
• New Science and EU Student support being excluded from access to EU funding after March 2019.
• Small online purchases coming from the EU could be liable for VAT.

The main beneficiaries will be the additional 7000 plus administrators roped in to help deal with the extra red tape. More papers to be released over the coming month.

Whilst the hypnotically calm voice of Dominic Raab introduced the papers in soothing voice and with the assurance that of course we still hoped for a deal, Chancellor Philip Hammond dropped his own spoiler. He stated that the UK economy would suffer by up to 8%, whichever Brexit happened.

Good news from the US. According to President Trump, he cannot be impeached because the US, nay, the world economy would crash - after all, he has achieved so much more than any other president.

Teflon President's Associates Guilty as Fraudsters. A Peacock Wing Puzzle

Well, it was not a good day for Trump, with guilty charges and pleas from two of his former associates for illegal dealings and fraud. It must have been bad as the President didn't tweet on the issue for 12h. The issues might seem convoluted to an outsider - and possibly the President himself. I've tried to get them clear in my head below.

Paul Manafort, the presidents former campaign manager, was declared guilty on 8 of the 18 counts put against him. He was found to have submitted false foreign income declarations during the period where he acted as a consultant for the then pro Russian Ukrainian president and was paid tens of millions of dollars. Then, when the Ukraine money ran out, he used false declarations to achieve loans in millions of dollars from banks. His sentence could be for up to 60 years, according to US media, but was more likely to be between 8 to 10 years.

All these activities pre-date his involvement with the Trump campaign and the president praised Manafort on Twitter today after a long silence, for his refusal to 'break' under intense pressure and 'invent' stories about Trump.

President Trumps former longstanding lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty on charges of violating campaign finance laws, the latter done at the direction of "the candidate", for the "principal purpose of influencing [the] election". The payments were hush money paid to two women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs. Cohen also pleaded guilty to million dollar amounts of tax evasion. With his plea bargain, Cohen could see his sentence from reduced from 65 years to five years and three months, according to the BBC.

President Trump does not like Michael Cohen anymore but also thinks that the campaign payment violations were not a crime, as others like Obama had made them too in the past. Almost a reasonable argument until you find out that the Obama violation was due to delays of declaring donations made by others to the campaign within a required 48h period. The actions were not deliberately hidden and the donations were declared, so this was a civil offence. Cohen, on the other hand, deliberately chose to make payments (whether alone or under instruction) and keep them secret, making this a criminal offence.

But will the mud stick on the irascible Teflon President? Not yet.  Perhaps at some point in the future, all the accumulated inconsistencies and dealings will slowly add up even for his core electoral base -  until a small final addition causes a tipping point and a rapid fall from grace.

In-between work and other distractions, I finally managed to edit the image of a Peacock butterfly fore-wing. Over 3000 photographs taken, to create 103 focus stacks, which were then joined into one panorama. The final panorama had one small gap near the front edge of the wing in a dark area, after the poor Hugin panorama software had tried to assemble the full wing over the best part of a day. Today, I manually fitted in the missing piece. Ironically, I had to down-sample the image so that you can see it above. The level of detail is reflected in a small section of the image shown below. See if you can work out where it should fit.

Calm before the BrexiTrump storms. Soyuz and Gliding.

Whilst President Trump's tweets have gradually lost their interest factor due to the almost predictable Good Guys - Bad Guys rhetoric, critical changes could be in the air this week. The accumulation of court cases and investigations is set to reach at least one litmus test in the immediate future. Will Paul Manafort, his onetime campaign chairman, be sentenced to a life in prison or will he walk free, after a case investigating apparently shady financial dealings with Ukraine politicians and fraud charges.

In the UK, senior cabinet members have been beavering away over the Summer, attempting to sweet talk a range of EU leaders into agreeing that the Prime Minister's Chequers deal is a reasonable option, especially when compared to the looming prospect of a No Deal Brexit. With the latter now having a 50:50 chance of occurring, the government has promised to release a whole range of papers this Thursday, advising how different sectors and presumably the general population should prepare for a hard Brexit, just in case.

Meanwhile the pound meanders slowly downwards against the Euro (at €1.11 today), and financially troubled Turkey becomes a desirable holiday destination as holidays there are still cheap.

As ever, life still goes on. We traveled to Peterborough on Thursday to see the Soyuz capsule that returned UK Astronaut Tim Peake home. It was displayed in the left wing of Peterborough Cathedral and drew a steady crown of the curious. The fire scarred exterior, ancient and robust wiring and cramped inner space brought home the perils of spaceflight, at a fatality rate of 1% to date.

Yesterday evening, after the rain had cleared the air, you could apparently see the reflections from London's Shard, 60 miles away up in a glider. I missed that view as I was concentrating on trying to keep the glider nose at the right trim whilst conducting straight-line flight and simple left and right turns under the watchful eyes of experienced pilots. I flew in two different two-seaters with dual controls. The first was a modern design, with the pilot sitting behind the passenger. The glide ratio was about 46:1. The second glider was a 1950s open cockpit, wooden model, the Bluebell, with a glide ratio of around 20:1. Pilot and passenger sat side by side. Even to an inexperienced passenger, the flight characteristics were very different when allowed to handle the joy stick. Despite the disconcerting element of having to wear a parachute, gliding is relatively safe, with a probability of fatality of 0.7 per 100,000 flights. This is a lot safer than driving in the UK, where the number of fatalities is about 5.1 per 100,000. The flights themselves were much safer than the drive to and from the airport!