Special Guest Blogger: Jerry Siegel

As one of the creators with Joe Shuster of one of the World's most iconic superheroes, we turned into chumps in a single bound when we sold him for the paltry sum of $130, which we then had to split between ourselves.
Superman had long languished in my imagination and when i met illustrator Joe who equally shared my vivid imagination and he gave dimension to vision in my head.
Only problem was, no one else cared. For six years Superman was rejected by a succession of publishers until finally Vin Sullivan, editor of National Allied Publications (precursor of DC Comics), agreed to put him on the June 1938 cover of National’s Action Comics #1. Superman had at last taken flight but without either of its creators along to enjoy the ride.
Just before our superhero hit the stands, we  signed away all rights to our creation, with their names spelled wrong on the accompanying $130 check, and agreed to continuous life as employees of the publisher for ten years.
It was a colossal kryptonite making decision which resulted in decades wrangling in court to reclaim the rights to our signature character.
Finally in the 1970s Warner Communications, the eventual owner of the Superman franchise, gave us pensions of $20,000 per year, as well as health benefits but that was due to the studio couldn't afford the bad publicity with a Superman movie on the way.
Superman, meanwhile, kept well above the fray, continuing the very lucrative pursuit of truth, justice, and the American way, earning billions for his new owners, we died nearly broke while DC raked in billions from Superman alone. The Superdicks.

Jeffrey Epstein? Who's He Says Trump.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez summed up what many people thought when the Epstein files and a client list which were promised by Donald Trump to be released, were suddenly disappeared with her comment that: 'Wow who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?'
Confusingly the client list which Trump campaigned on releasing but now doesn't exist was once sat on the Attorney Generals desk waiting for approval release and was written by Obama and Hillary Clinton but once Elon Musk said Trump's name was on the list, strangely he has got very coy on wanting the papers released, saying anyone who now wanted it released (despite it not existing) were 'weaklings' and 'stupid people'.
As a quick recap, Jeffrey Epstein was the sex-trafficking financier and friend of Donald Trump who was in the Epstein flight log 26 times between 2001 and 2003, but Jeff conveniently died in jail while awaiting trial, apparently by suicide while Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with him to sexually abuse minors, and is currently serving 20 years in prison.
Donald Trump came to power promising to expose the cover-up of this story, but now, Trump say's there is no list. Nope. Non. Nyet. Negatory. Nada. Nej and there was never even a list to start with but now as even his own right wing numbnuts are turning on him, Trump is instructing the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to seek release of the Epstein grand jury testimony.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump had served as a contributor to some kind of 50th birthday scrapbook for Epstein for which he’d sent a 'bawdy' letter of a naked lady with the Trump signature serving as a kind of  pubic hair and a cryptic 'Happy birthday and may every day be another wonderful secret.'
Donald, remember he loves the uneducated, has denied the letter and said that that he has never in his life 'wrote a picture' and is threatening to sue the WSJ while calling the whole thing 'boring' and 'bullshit' so he wants everyone to so move on as there is nothing to see here, especially if it has his signature and refers to secrets between himself and one of the most infamous pedophile's anyway.
To paraphrase AOC, who would have thought that electing a sex offender who was great pals with a infamous pedophile who flew multiple times on his private plane and sent him a birthday card referring to 'secrets' would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?

Once It Is Known Makes The Difference

Diane Abbot is back in hot water for her explanation of types of racism, the same thing that got the Labour Whip removed from her two years ago.
The Labour Party are said to be looking incredibly seriously at the latest remarks where she previously said that: 'People of colour experienced racism all their lives, different to the prejudice experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers' which seemed to play down the experiences of other people and was much worse for the black communities' but this time she has clarified it, and she has a point.
She said today that: 'There must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know' and i take that to mean that the racism and prejudice isn't worse for black people, but black people are more easily identified for the targeting of it.
It is not obvious if someone is Jewish, Irish or a Traveller and in the 80's when i grew up some people in all 3 of these committees were targeted for some awful prejudice and abuse once it was known they were Jewish, Irish or a Traveller and that is the nub of what i believe Dianne Abbot is trying to say, once it was known because it wasn't obvious just by looking at them, but a Black or brown face is instantly recognised.   
The fact that any fascist arse wanting to beat up a Jew, Irish or Traveller would need to ask first them first if they were Jewish, Irish or a Traveller (and give them the option to hide and say they were neither) is not available to a non-white so yes, i agree that people of colour do experience it more just because they are more noticeable but that is not to say that the hatred and prejudice is less for the other groups, it is just those 4 words, 'Once It Is Known' which makes the difference.

16 Year Old's Voting

It is an idea that has been floated for quite a while and one that i have always supported which is to lower the voting age to 16.
My support is based on if you can work and pay tax at 16, why should you not get a vote to how your money is being spent so they should get a say although i widely suspect that a 16 year old will not be enough across the political spectrum and will be heavilly influenced by their peers, social media and their parents before which means that educating them in politics should begin in school.
That in itself is a delicate process, how to explain politics in a classroom without showing a preference for one side or the other would take a special skill because no matter how hard we can try to be removed, it is impossible so good luck with that.
There is also a whispered belief amongst the left that younger people tend to be more left wing and the right who seem to be more the preserve of the older persuasion seem to agree because they have come out and dismissed it.
I am all for it and if i get a chance to explain the difference between the left and the right to developing minds then i will do so calmly and with immense impartiality that while it can be said that not all right wingers are racist, xenophobic, sexist, greedy, homophobic fascists, all the racist, xenophobic, sexist, greedy, homophobic fascists are on the right wing so don't vote for them, you know it makes sense.

Special Guest Blogger: Frances Griffiths

I knew i was in a heap of trouble with my mother during that summer of 1917.
My cousin Elsie and I had gotten ourselves muddy and soaked while playing near a stream behind our home and when mum saw me, she sent to my bedroom where we came up with the idea that we had got into such a state while playing with fairies.
To prove it we borrowed a camera from Elsie’s father, after which Frances posed in front of a group of fairies we had clipped out of a children’s book and set in place with pins. Elsie then snapped the staged scene that would one day become one of the world’s most famous photographs.
We were shocked and surprised that it fooled anyone as it was an amateurish job and my mum wasn't fooled and immediately dismissed it.
We then produced more fairy pictures, and someone who really should have known better, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, became interested in them and he even arranged for cameras to be given to us both so that we could take some more fairy pictures and we managed to stage three more.
The creator of Sherlock Holmes had in recent years become absorbed in a new form of spiritualism sweeping Britain and to Doyle the existence of fairies simply wasn’t that far out, and he was thrilled to find evidence of them in Cottingley.
He sent letters to seeking permission to use the fairy photographs in an article he was writing on the subject for The Strand magazine and that December, the article was published.
After photography experts including Kodak declared the pictures genuine, the 100% not faked photographs were picked up by the Theosophical Society who used the pictures to prove that 'humanity is undergoing a cycle of evolution', whatever that meant.
We both married and lived abroad for a time after we grew up, and yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination and in 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper interviewed me and i said that maybe we had photographed our thoughts, just to keep the intrigue going.
We both kept our secret close for nearly seven decades because a brilliant man like Conan Doyle well, we could only keep quiet because he was a national treasure but in 1983 I felt I had to come clean and admitted the truth that the photographs were fakes and that the fairies were in fact nothing more than cardboard cut-outs from the Princess Mary's Gift Book. Sorry Conan, nice books though.

Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi Potus

Donald the Elephant packed his trunk
And trundled off to see Britain
Off he went with a Trumpety Trump
Trump Trump Trump

I assumed, like most of the civilised World, that last November the American public vote for the party not headed by the fat, lying sex offender with a criminal record for fraud who who led an insurrection, cheated on his wife and was promising to bring fascism to their shores and we would be welcoming a Democrat to the nation this September but instead they never so we get the Tangerine Tyrant and close friend of Jeffrey Epstein instead.
When France's President, Emmanuel Macron, was invited over last week he got the the whole enchilada and took home photos of him in Buckingham Palace, addressing Parliament, outside Number 10 and waving from the Royal Carriage at the non-protesters lining the street but the Poundland Mussolini isn't getting any of that.
In a neat swift bit of maneuvering, Trump is being directed to the top bit of the country away, well away from the interesting bits and will meet the King at Windsor Castle and not Buckingham Palace which is like being told you are going to a Restaurant and ending up sitting in a McDonald's with a Cheeseburger.
Last time he was here the British managed 400,000 protesters, including some especially great placards such as 'Orange is the new stupid', such as 'All in all you're another prick without no wall', 'Fascist Twat',  'We're British, we're polite but Fuck off please' but the genius one was 'Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi Potus'.
The real bit of  careful planning to keep him away from everything though is scheduling the visit for the day after Parliament goes into recess so no vision of a lying scumbag who can't keep his zipper done up, well not unless Boris Johnson puts in another appearance anyway.
I am also certain that the giant Trump baby balloon will come out of storage which portrayed Trump as a 20-foot-high inflatable in a nappy with a snarl on its face, like it’d just been told it had lost a free and fair presidential election or something.
All in all i am sure the visit of the Carrot coloured sex offender will provide us Brits with some late Summer entertainment.

Special Guest Blogger: Carl Rosenbaum

I was an employee of the Noble Austrian Esterházy family and through my marriage to a famous Opera Singer, Therese Gassmann, we were celebrities in Viennese circles and it was through them that i became good friends with composer Joseph Haydn.
When my good friend died after a long illness, I was appalled by the meager farewell given to my musical hero but as Vienna under siege by Napoleon at the time, the genius drew few of the honors that might have been accorded him under better circumstances, as many would-be mourners were otherwise engaged in not dying themselves.
I had a far better idea and for that i needed Haydn’s head. In the late 19th Century a relatively new science known as phrenology had gained widespread credibility as a means of understanding the human mind through examination of the skull. It was believed that the various shapes and contours of the cranium indicated specific human characteristics.
My intention was to map musical brilliance using the head of the man who possessed it in such abundance and four days after the burial i slipped the cemetery warden a few notes and he delivered the head to me in my carriage.
Unfortunately it was the height of summer and the smell of the putrefying head made me sick but the next step was to remove the skin from the head and i handed over the head to a scientist friend who stripped away the muscle and ligature that obscured the all-revealing skull and popped ou the brain and tossed it into the hospital furnace.
Meanwhile, i was delighted to see that a far grander memorial service had been arranged for Haydn although while the composer was being more appropriately celebrated, his head was soaking in lime-water at a nearby hospital
The corrosive bath did wonders on the skull, transforming it to a gleaming white and ready to be set in the display case I had so lovingly constructed for it. And there it remained for over a decade in a handsome custom-made black wooden box, with a symbolic golden lyre at the top, glass windows and a white cushion until it was decided that Haydn deserved an even more dignified burial site and that’s when it was discovered something was amiss.
Upon exhumation of the grave they found only a wig left where the head should have been and an investigation by the police traced it back to me so i gave them  a substitute skull. They weren’t fooled that time but I successfully foisted a second fake on them which they placed in the grave above the severed neck, while hiding the real skull in my wife’s bed as she pretended to be ill.
The skull remained with me for the rest of my life so i don't know if the composer’s head was never reunited with the rest of him.

1945 Labour v 2025 Version

The Conservative Party, and Liz Truss in particular, is often accused of running down the country and hollowing out our institutions such as the Police, NHS and pretty much everything else in an ideological zeal.
It's a problem that the new Labour Government say they are are currently trying to correct but as they are starting from the very low base they inherited, it is going to take some time and some tough decisions, apparently even tougher if you are a Pensioner or Disabled because it was there they bizarrely decided to start before having a change of heart and deciding taking money away from the old and the weakest members of society doesn't lend itself to gaining the moral high ground so they are now looking elsewhere to bolster their depleted coffers.  
The Labour Party of 2025, has a GDP of between £3.84 trillion and $4.45 trillion to play with each year while in 1945 they had  £8.8 billion (worth £408bn today) to tinker with and that was after WW2 when pretty much everything was flattened by the Luftwaffe.
The incoming 1945 Government under Clement Attlee introduced state ownership of major industries, a universal entitlement to pensions, child benefit and introduced legal aid.
They gave us the The Education Act which established the principle of free secondary education and former armaments factories were used to turn out prefabricated dwellings and whole new council estates began to be built with bathrooms and inside toilets.
Most symbolic was giving the nation the National Health Service, a universal health-care system, free at the point of delivery, available to all, irrespective of income or status and a National Insurance Scheme introduced to pay for it.
Amazing that with the Country, at the end of World War II and with Britain's national debt standing at 270% of its GDP, a Government managed to do all that while today it stands at 97% of GDP which is still a huge amount but the Government tell us their hands are tied when it comes to spending.
Everything is political and the Government gets an annual amount to spend as it wishes but i wonder why the 1945 Labour Party with it's massive debt still decided to use its political time in office to make things better for everyone while the 2025 version is dicking around with saving £3bn by not removing the two-child benefit cap which would lift between an estimated 250,000 and 540,000 children out of poverty.
Even more obscene when you consider they have no qualms on raising the defence budget to 3% of GDP (£75bn) and that doesn't count the cost of our obscene nuclear weapons at £20bn a year so we have the money, we are just not spending it right.

Oooops, Sorry About Killing You

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said 'a technical error with the munition'  had caused one of their missiles to kill 10 Palestinians, including six children, who were queuing at a water collection point in the Nuseirat refugee camp.  
As usual, they said that they will hold a review and laughably adding that it: 'Works to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians as much as possible' which would raise eyebrows of the 60,000 Palestinians if Israel hadn't already killed them in its ongoing genocide against them.
I assume the 800 killed by Israel at aid distribution sites was also down to technical error and those killed in Hospitals, refugee sites they had been directed to and in their own homes were also due to technical error, or maybe they just meant those ones.
As for the latest peace talks,  the 1.5km no-go buffer zone inside Gaza which Hamas reluctantly agreed to suddenly became a 3km no-go buffer zone inside Gaza with a continued Israeli presence in vast swathes of territory. and the Israeli's insisted that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who are shooting at Palestinians be allowed to carry on in their role.  
Someone would think that Israel doesn't want peace and that it is happy to carry on and drive the Palestinians from their land and as dramatically moving the goal posts and then saying it was the other side who walked away is a well worn Israeli tactic to abandon peace talks for decades, you would be right.

Special Guest Blogger: Great British Goddess Britannia

My journey starts off in sunny Rome as a Goddess of wisdom and knowledge, a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield and ends as the patron deity in the not so sunny Albion.
Back in my Roman days i was called Minerva and anything to do with music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving and the crafts came under my domain. I also created the Olive tree and after Medusa and Neptune got up to hanky panky in one of my temples, I turned her into a monster, replacing her hair with hissing snakes and turned any living creature she looked upon into stone but it was when the Romans invaded Britain that my sweet, sweet life took a swerve.
During the Roman occupation of Albion, it was common for carpenters to own tools ornamented with images of me to invoke a greater amount of protection from the goddess of crafts which all seems very sensible.
Some women would also have images of me on accessories such as hairpins or jewellery and as the Romans liked to invent Goddess for the places they ruled over,  and because they were not willing to give up Minerva, they began calling the place Britanniae and invented the persona of Brittania who was basically me sat with a shield and holding a spear.
When the Romans gave up and went home in the 5th Century, i continued to be the deity and the later Kings began putting me on coins and titles in charters but I really came into my own following the Acts of Union which joined the Kingdoms of England and Scotland and saw Britain the rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of continental Europe become known as Great Britain but still remained a rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic.
My image as Britannia was used as an emblem of Great Britain, i even had a song about Britannia rules the waves which would have really ticked off Neptune but he was a dick so i didn't mind that so much.
Due to the British Empire i was suddenly everywhere but somehow the Victorians never managed to invade Rome so i never got a chance to get my own back but musicians do get a little effigy of me at the annual Brit Awards  but although i was pretty ticked that i was forcibly moved to Britain, it isn't so bad, i mean the weathers crap, the food isn't great and don't get me started on the politicians while the only waves it will be ruling these days are the ones in the swimming pool at Butlin's but it's not so bad here although i do find that strange Rhyming Slang they use a bit confusing where your plates are nothing to do with kitchenware, your boat is not the one with oars and any mention of Bristol's and Hampton's are not meant in any geographical way whatsover.