Lord Adonis

I get my hair cut near where my friend Anne O’Dwyer lives. She told me about this place, which charges 18 pounds instead of the 30 pounds I was paying. We both have short, easy haircuts, so don’t want to shell out for the full salon experience.
I texted Anne to see if she wanted to go for a walk after my 2pm appt. and she asked if I were going to the QPol event today--a speech by Lord Andrew Adonis. QPol is Queen’s Politics, a series of lectures.
And that is how I came to sit in a hot, standing room only lecture hall at Queen’s this afternoon, listening to Lord Adonis explain the foundations of Brexit--dating to the British Euroscepticism that accompanied the founding of the Common Market. He said the last vote Margaret Thatcher cast in the House of Commons was in favour of a referendum on membership of the Common Market. He said Thatcher liked the market part of the deal but not the common part.
He said it is more important than ever that the U.K. remain integrated with its European partners, citing three primary threats: Putin, Xi, and Trump. It is so hard to get my head around the president of the United States equating to Putin and Xi as a threat to democracy. I fully understand why Trump deserves this critique, it’s just hard to watch him drag the office and country down with him.
The other thing he said that caught my attention was that Russia had massed troops along the border of Baltic states. He said British troops are playing the lead role in working with the Estonian Army to buttress defences. I knew Putin has territorial ambitions, I just didn’t realise how in-your-face he is about it. His calculation is that Trump will weaken NATO, which won’t respond to Russian aggression on NATO’s border with Russia.
Sad!
I also learned that Lord Adonis is half Cypriot and that Nicosia is divided between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot zones, with a UN buffer.
After the presentation, Anne & I expressed our enthusiasm for his insights and debate skills (as the audience asked challenging questions), while Shaun and Jack (Anne’s partner and son) felt Adonis was too much of the elite and not an effective advocate for his goal of a second referendum on Brexit. They said Farage and Johnson are better at connecting with the “common man” and that is why they are better at putting their arguments across.
With all of this heady content, I then set off for a round of golf with two Women in Golf students, which went a lot better than the last round I played with WiG students, so I was relieved. I hate spending a lot of time looking for balls when I’m playing with other people. I didn’t lose a single ball, which is not like me.
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