What is it good for?

DD has deserted me this weekend to fly to China for a business meeting.

A meeting. Just one. On a Saturday.

Blimey.

He’s spending 16 hours on a plane getting there, attending the single meeting in Beijing, then spending 16 hours on a plane getting back.

How fun does that sound?

Very not fun.

I would prefer he wasn’t travelling to China and I am becoming increasingly edgy about Europe.

I’ve gone down a rabbit hole of reading far too many scary stories about what’s happening there right now.

When you see a news headline that says “Former prime minister Tony Abbott says Donald Trump is ‘living in fantasy land’” when it comes to the situation, I think its safe to assume that Houston, we have a problem. 

“I think Donald Trump has done a lot of good things in the brief time he’s been the president,” my mate Tony told the Radio Times.

 And I mean that in the way Aussies say to their friends, “there’s your mate” when they see someone that is DEFINITELY not your mate.

My “mate” Tony is normally an outspoken supporter of the US President.

“I welcome his common sense on energy,” Tony added. “I welcome his common sense on gender and on the kind of woke madness which has invaded our boardrooms.

“I think his domestic policy is really to be applauded. Government does need to be much more efficient. The swamp does need to be drained, walls do need to be built. I think all of that is terrific.”

Hmmmmm. If you could see me now, my eyebrows would be raised to hairline level …

But Tony isn’t so keen on the way the Russia-Ukraine war is being handled or the President’s assertion that the Ukraine started it.

“Putin started this war. Russia started this war, and anyone who thinks otherwise is living in fantasy land,” Tony said.

As for the President’s views on sorting it out …

“This idea that you can somehow appease dictators, this idea that might is right, well, that is completely foreign to everything that America and the broader West has stood for these last 70 years now,” he said.

“Obviously we want peace, but it can’t just be a surrender to vicious, naked aggression, it can’t be. The basis for peace has got to be that Ukraine can live in independence and security going forward.”

Nicholas Kristof writes at the AFR: “I’m not sure most Americans appreciate the monumental damage President Donald Trump is doing to the post-World War II order that is the wellspring of US global leadership and affluence.

“He’s shattering it. He’s making the world more dangerous.”

Australia is a long way from Europe, but the reverberations will be felt here and I am frightened about the future that is being forced on our children.

On that very not cheery note, I’m signing off for the week and looking forward to the escapism of seeing the new Bridget Jones movie with my sister and daughter tonight.

Hug the ones you love.

Song of the day: Frankie Goes to Hollywood “War”