I was tired on this foggy morning after my late night but still spent the whole morning completing the FOCUS copy with colleagues coming round to check the final result. After all this, I cleared my office ready to get down to some history work as Frost & Co still plan to start building the conservatory on Wednesday. More controversial plans from the Tory government, this time concerning TV programming and broadcasting, but thousands of government employees strike in support of union colleagues being persecuted at GCHQ. A large earthquake in China kills 600 on their border with Burma.
I had gone to bed well after midnight and was tired as a result when woken at 7am. I still got up and down to breakfast with the others and then started the task of working with the computer to lay out the centrefold of my new FOCUS newsletters. It took me just about the whole morning to complete these and I printed them out for us to study at lunch whilst we ate – they are very good and easily made so due to the prior efforts of Bill Walston. This afternoon, I photocopied and filled in the forms and then prepared the artwork for the printers. Mike Pope and Percy Meyer come around and looked at the copy and found one or two small errors and then we took the chance of being together to do some planning before I got out to feed the ducks and doves.
The day had started foggy, but it cleared after a while and at least it was not so cold as of late. This evening I just cleared up my office and filed everything away ready for a fresh start in the morning. I attended to all the urgent matters and can get down to some history work after the Public Enquiry tomorrow. Got to bed very much earlier tonight, after listening to the news and writing up my journal. The government are not avoiding controversy. Over the weekend, there was talk by Nigel Lawson of means testing pensioners benefits. Today, it was plans for dismantling the regulatory structure of TV broadcasting and opening the doors to numerous national and local stations. The country with the best record of quality of TV programmes and broadcasting will now think, in my view, be reduced to the levels of the USA. There were thousands of government employees in a strike today in protest at the dismissal of union members at GCHQ. Across the pond, the presidential candidates are slugging it out with Dukakis attempting to close the gap in a late push. 600 people have been killed in China by a huge earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale on the border with Burma. This was still minor compare with their worst one in 1976, July, when 242,000 died. I checked with Ivor Gibson of Frost & Co and, despite the architectural calculations being still in train, they still aim to start conservatory erection on Wednesday.