Government Fight To Protect Bankers

The Conservatives are the party of the bankers as more than half the funding they receive comes from that particular sector so it is no surprise that David Cameron and his cohorts are falling over themselves to splutter their disgust at the EU who are angling to slash bankers bonuses at a meeting of European finance ministers next week.
In a lovely bit of synchronicity, this came on the same day that the Royal Bank of Scotland posted losses of £5.2bn but still paid out more than £600m in bonuses.
Ever keen to defend the indefensible, the Prime Minister's spokesman was wheeled out to explain that: 'Bonuses are very significantly down on where they were in 2010. So you are seeing real responsibility and restraint'.
I'm not sure how responsible it is to pay out £600m as a bonus to the people who have just lost you £5.2bn, sounds like rank madness to me but it goes a long way to explain why the banks are bringing down economies all over the globe like nine pins.
Seems to my non-financial mind that the EU is simply doing what this and the last government failed to do, which is get a grip on the disastrous financial sector.
It might be upsetting the Government but this is an area of regulation that the man in the street will gladly get behind as everyone apart from bankers and the Government feel a brake on the runaway financial sector is long overdue.
The argument is that if we reduce the size of the trough that they have their noses in, they will forced to up sticks for foreign climes. Just how much we will miss them, these people who were so awful at their job that they have not only cost the country tens of billions with no discernible results after 5 years of throwing money at them, i think the answer will be a big cheer and a lot of offers to carry their bags to the airport. 
I'm all for giving it a go and calling their bluff about leaving the country, there are plenty of people who can take their place for much cheaper rates and if they turn out to be rubbish at their jobs and make massive losses, we are no worse off and are actually better off because we haven't just paid them £600m in bonuses for being no good at their job.
The Government have had no problem wheeling out the 'all in this together' mantra when it is the poor they are taking money away from, they don't much care that nurses and policemen have had a pay freeze for the past 3 years but then they don't seem so bothered about them leaving the country to go work in foreign hospitals but we need to throw out six figure bonuses on top of tax cuts to keep the bankers here, the people whose fault it is that we are in a depression.  
The Government are bringing austerity to the poor but fighting tooth and nail against the EU to protect the bankers earning more in a year than many people earn in a lifetime.
The hypocrisy is unbelievable that our Government is openly hostile to putting any control on one of the most blatantly corrupt and damaging areas of society but the biggest shame is that the general election, and the chance to turf out the party of the bankers, is still two years away.

Hasn't He Gone Yet?

It was up to the Church we would still believe that the Sun went around the Earth, the World was created by an invisible man in the clouds and evolution is a myth but despite getting all the main parts wrong, there are still people who look to the Church for guidance and the Catholics are frantically rubbing their rosary beads today because there is a Pope shaped hole in the Vatican as the latest Pope flies off by helicopter into the sunset.
In one of a few 'final goodbyes', Benny said that there had been moments in his papacy during which God seemed to be sleeping but that must have been one hell of a kip the big guy was taking considering what the Catholics Church have been getting up to for the past 1000 years. 
After his final, final goodbye at 7pm tonight, Benedict's Vatican apartment will be sealed and all
symbols of his Papal authority will be destroyed and then begins the hunt is on for the next guy who will protect child abusers and who would prefer people to die of AIDS rather than condone the use of condoms although there will not be a British representative because our man has been forced to resign due to 'inappropriate behaviour' with young clergymen back in the 80s.
The last tweet from the Pope to his 1.2 billion Catholics read 'Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives' but if any of the 1.2 billion Catholics are wondering if they want to carry on the strict Catholic rules but want to remain in a Church, they should consider defecting to the Church of England.
Seriously, it's a complete blag and as long as you remember to repent just before you die, you end up going to the same place as all those Catholics who have been sweating on the rhythm method anyway. Give it a go, you will only be replacing one old relic in the Pope for another in the Queen and God saves her according to the song.

Music's Decline Is Ending Apparently

For over a decade now we have heard the sound of record executives scratching their heads and wondering why they are not selling so many record s anymore.
The finger was pointed at MP3 downloading and wheeled out the likes of Britney Spears to tell kids not to get their music for free but to pay the over the odds in record shops for their CD of pap instead, can't see why that wouldn't work.
Now the recorded music business has seen its first jump in revenues since 1999 but what nobody realised, or they did but never mentioned, was that since 1999 the music they have been churning out has been pants.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's annual Digital Music Report has concluded that the global music industry is now returning to health but if it is then it is only because of cheaper music now and music streaming sites and You Tube and peer 2 peer MP3 downloading.
Before all the cheaper alternatives became available, record companies were ramping up the price of CD's and then bleating when people opted for the free alternative but those days are over, try it again and the listeners will be back to downloading music from Utorrent.
The main reason is that musically, the 2000's has been, to be polite, not very good.
I am sure performers like Olly Murs, One Direction and Leona Lewis are perfectly nice people, it's just their type of music is so safe and boring. Annoyingly for people like me who like their musicians loud and their music louder, this on-going wave of ballad warbling artists have elbowed anyone with a noisy guitar to the sidelines.  
Gone are the days when bad behaviour and rivalry between bands held sway, today's musicians are all about being in bed by 10 and respecting each other as artists. All very commendable but very, very boring. 
The music companies have obviously worked out that it is much easier to manage an Adele than it would be an Axl Rose. Far from an evening of Jack Daniels and debauchery, today’s musicians look like they are more likely to vacuum and tidy up the hotel room rather than smash it up.
One chink of light in an otherwise magnolia, bland music landscape is that music is cyclical and we have these uninteresting gaps between the good stuff but it has been a long wait for a replacement to the likes of an Axel Rose, Johnny Rotten or Iggy Pop to liven things up a bit because Justin Beiber, Beyonce and Kelly Clarkson sure aren't it.
We can only repeat the wise lyrics of King Kurt when he said 'Here we are now, Entertain us'. Please.

Good Old Billy Ray Harris

When i have had enough of spouting my left wing, hippy, tree hugging propaganda, i always thought a nice blog with just good news would be my next thing
but luckily there is enough right wing nonsense that winds me up to keep me going for a while yet so the good news blog will have to stay in the pending
tray.
That said, there is a good news story on the Sky News website today that makes me realise that in a World where the likes of George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld live, there are also folk like Billy Ray Harris who is proving that the good guys can win.     
Miss Darling tipped her spare change from her change purse into the homeless Mr Harris's cup, forgetting that her engagement ring was also in her purse.
Two days later, she found Mr Harris and he gave the ring back to her.
So grateful was Miss Darling and her fiance that they set up a page at the giveforward website to raise $1000 for the beggar but now that the story has spread, $152,000 has been raised and all donations are to be given directly to Billy Ray at the end of the 90 day campaign which closes 15 May so the final amount could be a very tide sum indeed.
Nice story as they get their engagement ring back, Billy Ray's honesty has earned him a shot at getting his life back together but most importantly, we are reminded that there are decent people amongst us.   
Enjoy it Billy.

Printer Cartridge Scam

I have always maintained, and have yet to be proved wrong, that the market should not be left alone to regulate themselves because when nobody is looking, they will rip us off in the search for a profit and a report in the Guardian Money pages has shown what we have known all along about print cartridges, the manufacturers have been ripping us off for years.
While the size of the cartridge has stayed the same, the size of the sponges inside which hold the ink, have progressively reduced over the years and the rest of the cartridge is now simply empty space.
As well as ripping us off over the amount of ink in the cartridge, the manufacturers have been trying to stop consumers from buying cheaper refills, forcing us to buy their more expensive products.
Chris Brooks, technical director of industry group the UK Cartridge Remanufacturers Association states: 'The big printer companies do all they can to squeeze ever-increasing amounts of cash out of the poor consumer in exchange for less ink.'
The conning print manufacturers have also introduced a new XL cartridge, and priced it appropriately, even though it contains as much ink as was previously offered in the standard cartridge. 
The argument made by Epson and HP is that as the printers print heads are more efficient today, we need less ink to print the same amount of pages as previously but which may be more persuasive if the cost had come down but with cartridges costing less than 50p to make, we get less ink while the manufacturers sell us cartridges at the same price and maintain their massive markup.
As the refilling business has eaten into the cartridge makes profits, they now include embedded technology to block cheap refills so if you buy a printer from Epson or HP, we have no choice but to buy their cartridges.
It seems that we are being surrounded by a bunch of corporate thieves everywhere we turn, conning the public for a profit and another page to be added to the well thumbed book of why unregulated Capitalism is a disaster and just a free pass to just rip everyone off. 
Where is the Office of Fair Trading or the 

1000th Day In Prison For Manning

This weekend sees the 1000th day of incarceration for Bradley Manning who faces more than 30 charges, including one of 'aiding the enemy that carries
the death penalty after he passed a trove of diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks exposing the criminal war actions of the US army in Iraq.
One of the two most shocking revelations he bought to our attention were the chopper video showing US pilots shooting and killing civilians on the streets of Baghdad, an act that was strongly denied by the US military for years until it was finally uncovered.
The second was the evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an air strike to destroy the evidence in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi.
The following investigation into the chopper incident resulted in one soldier being exonerated and the other being suspended without pay for a month, the person who revealed this to the world is just about to spent his 1000th day in prison.
As a candidate, Barack Obama said whistle blowers engaged in 'acts of courage and patriotism that should be encouraged rather than stifled' and called for protection to empower them as 'watchdogs of wrongdoing' but as the Manning case shows, the Obama administration is just as fixated with secrecy and covering up its own crimes and intimidating any future whistle blowers and this is what this the oppressive treatment of Manning is all about.
This is designed to send a signal to those in the future who may discover serious wrongdoing committed in secret by the US and show that if they are even considering exposing what they have learned, they only have to look at Manning to see what awaits them.
In a truly just world it would be the chopper pilots and the animals who shot and then tried to cover up the killing of an Iraqi family in their homes sitting in a prison cell, a far greater crime than  revealing the deaths of innocent civilians but the decision has already been made and Bradley Manning is the one who will be convicted.
The Administration and the Army will make an example of him and he will not be released from detention, until he is an old man, if at all, and made to suffer as much as possible in a bid to dissuade similar acts.
America may take a hit to it's public image, it still has not fully recovered from the Bush years of wars and more and more people are waking up to Obama and his similarly deranged foreign policy, but the willingness to prosecute Manning to the fullest extent overrides any rational thoughts while most rational people see Manning as a hero for bringing to light what the awful things his country is denying doing. Things that they would be the first to condemn if their was another nations flag on the leaked files.   
The American public should be thankful that the United States Army has someone with integrity and conscience, willing to put their career and even their life on the line to expose the dangerous, trigger happy cowboys who would shoot a 7 month old Iraqi baby in the head while he slept in his cot.

Playstation 4 Launched

I often mull over the thought that the Sugababes launched in 1998 but since then there has been many changes of line-up and none of the three girls in that first line up are in the line up now so if i went to a Sugababes concert today, could i say that i have seen them or have i just seen a completely different band who just happen to be called the Sugababes? 
Not that it really hs anyhing at all to do with the launch of the Playstation 4 this week apart from i haven't actually seen the Sugababes and all the gamers gripping their joysticks in eager anticipation got to see a Playstation 4 either.
I'm not sure how you can call it a launch when you don't show the product, reveal the price or even when you can get your sweaty little fingers on one but somehow Sony managed to drag out for two hours something you can't see or buy.
'We believe PlayStation 4 proves that we have more to offer than ever before' the presenter said before waving and exiting stage right.     
Now is it just me or was it just a man on stage talking about how brilliant something was for 120 minutes but not actually letting anyone see it? 
As the Sugababes said 'Push the Button and let me know before I get the wrong idea and go'. Go buy an Xbox 360 i assume they meant.

Pistorius Jokes

When a celebrity is in the news, whether they have been caught doing something they shouldn't have or have even died, within minutes the jokes are flying around.
I heard about the death of Princess Diana by a joke on my mobile phone about St. Peter explaining to someone at the pearly gates that it was a a steering wheel above her head and not a halo and the Michael Jackson jokes were flowing while he was still in the ambulance but there has been a lack of Oscar
Pistorious jokes being forwarded.
Where my mobile is usually politely asking me to delete some messages by now, i have just got just a handful, 'Oscar’s defence will be that he was absolutely legless at the time', him not having a leg to stand on and a Frankie Boyle joke that 'Oscar Pistorius’s girlfriend must have known he was armed as those are the only limbs he’s got'.
I don't know if it is a particularly English thing but bad taste jokes are something we seem to revel in and anyone is fair game, even the much revered Queen Mother (What's rich, sweet and comes in a box at Easter? The Queen Mum) but we seem to have become a bit squeamish about Oscar probably because he is disabled.
There is the argument that to laugh at an Oscar Pistorious joke is somehow laughing at all disabled people and society has moved on thanks to the Paralympics last summer and disabled people are not to be mocked but they miss the point, Oscar happens to be a disabled man who is being talked about and his disability is part of this defence, saying he first went to the bathroom door without his prosthetic limbs on and feeling vulnerable, he fired into the bathroom door.
Following any disaster or tragedy, deeply offensive gags swiftly proliferate, the medical professionals and emergency services have always been known for their gallows humour and psychologists suggest that one of the reasons we laugh at tragedy is that it makes the issue easier to deal with, Sigmund Freud said that sick jokes were the mechanism by which the ego insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world.
Pistorius is a famous man accused of a heinous crime, he also happens to have had his legs amputated and so the jokes are obviously set around that just as if it was Stevie Wonder the jokes would be about his blindness or if you hear a Beethoven joke, it would almost certainly be a joke about his deafness.
Talking to other people from other nations, it seems that this type of thing doesn't go on quite so much in other countries and while some of the jokes are tasteless, warped, insensitive and sometimes very offensive, it shows that no matter how bad something is, us British will laugh at it.
Not sure if that is a good thing or not or even how it reflects on us but it isn't going to stop anytime soon.
Latest Oscar Pistorius joke to my phone: He has been turned down by the South African cricket team for the job as kit man because he only had 2 stumps and no bail.

Osborne Doing What He Knows Best

After Britain was stripped of its AAA-rated debt status for the first time ever Friday, predictably George Osborne has come in for a fair amount of stick and is being labelled inept and inexperienced but that isn't fair.
Rather than being a towel-folding nobody without any experience of running an economy, i refuse to believe that you gain this level of ability of being so utterly incompetent without years of experience.
So while we think of George bumbling his way from the Bullingdon Club to Conservative Central Office to the Chancellors Chair via a spell folding towels at Selfridges, it was a period of gaining experience of doing absolutely nothing therefore moulding him into the type of person who can get into office and make a complete shambles of the countries economy. 
Far from being inept and a economic dunce, he has put into practice exactly what he learned in those years, namely, f**k all.
To anyone else, the triple dip recession we are heading into and the downgrading of the AAA status to AAA1, would signal that it was time for Plan B, but to a man with George's experience of doing sweet FA, he has promised to not only plough on with what is patently already not working, but to 'stick to his course and redouble his resolve to tackle Britain's financial problems'.
You don't get to be that bad by accident, to have the country removed from the elite club of AAA countries, that is years of experience of sitting on his arse doing nothing worthwhile swinging into action.  
In 2010, in the run-up to the General Election, Gideon explained that he would 'safeguard Britain's credit rating with a credible plan to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit over a parliament' which he plainly hasn't done and the country now faces even further hardship as the reduced credit rating makes it more expensive for the UK to borrow money but it hasn't happened because George is inexperienced, it has happened because George has put into practise exactly what he knows about running an economy, nothing whatsoever.

Regrets Of The Dying

I don't know if i could think of a harder, more emotional and upsetting job than that of a palliative care nurse, caring for patients in the last few weeks of their lives but Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent years doing this incredible job and has written a very poignant book called 'The Top Five Regrets of the Dying'.

Bronnie recorded their regrets and the top most reoccurring of those at the end of their lives are:

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. 'This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again'.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 'Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying'.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. 'Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result'.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. 'This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence'.

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 'This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it'.

Trading On Peoples Misery

If you ever find yourself at home during the day, you can't fail to see the array of advertisements for payday loans and the new boy on the block, fast log book loans where they state you can 'UNLOCK CASH FROM YOUR CAR WITH A FAST LOGBOOK LOAN, BORROW UP TO £50,000 WITH NO CREDIT CHECKS, LOGBOOK LOANS QUOTE TAKES JUST 30 SECONDS!
and with a shorter time than it takes to boil the kettle, you are in debt to one of the parasites that are blighting our TV screens and of course, in the small print and hidden away on the website it states 'A Log Book loan is secured against your vehicle, which may be repossessed if you do not make payment'.
The Citizens Advice Bureau is urging the trading watchdog to use new powers to stop payday lenders in their tracks, providing a dossier of the worst firms that are 'exacerbating debt problems and causing significant distress' by using methods such as inflating their fees charges, chasing people for debts on loans which they had never taken out, continuing to take money when debts have been paid off and firms preventing customers from making repayments online or over the phone and then slapping them with a charge for late repayment.
Most of us an see what these payday loan people are up to, targeting and taking advantage of innocent people who are in a debt crisis already and ramping it up. The way these companies profit out of the misery of the poor is disgraceful and unethical because they prey on people who are not managing on their income and so borrow short term until their next wage, which is obviously going to be a downward spiral of misery.
I have heard the argument that that it is the fault of the people who take out the loans but that would be like saying a drug addict has only himself to blame if you offer him a fix and he takes it. If you put temptation in the way of a desperate person, they are going to take it.
So why are the Government not stepping in to protect the exploited?
Say hello to Adrian Beecroft, adviser on employment policy to the Government and he just happens to be the Chairman of Dawn Capital who is a major shareholder in of  Wonga Group, the largest payday lender in the UK and a major donor to the Tory party, having handed over £593,000 since David Cameron became leader.
In case you missed that, an adviser to the Government on employment policy is the man whose company makes his fortune by offering extortionate loans to struggling families but that conflict of interest must have been lost in the noise of that cheque for over half a million winging it's way into the Tory bank account.  
The financial website moneysupermarket.com said there had been a 130% increase in the number of payday loans taken out in 2012 compared with last year and that is a lot of people being driven into destitution and even suicide by these nasty leeches trading on the poorest in societies misery.

So It Begins

After spending the day roaming the streets with a bottle of industrial strength weedkiller and a small child with a cold, i am happy to report that i have not seen any killer plants wandering about the place or any alien spaceships so we are safe and the meteorite in Russia yesterday was not the start of an invasion by big plants or aliens but not everyone thinks that the big rock falling from space yesterday was just a big rock falling from space.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky is a Russian politician and claims that the meteor was actually a clandestine American weapons test and an act of provocation by the U.S.
Although the best explanation could be that Vlad has been at the cheap vodka again, he backed up his claim arguing that newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had been trying to reach Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov all day, 'to warn him that there would be such a provocation, and it might affect Russia'.
Before the Russians start pointing their weapons towards Washington once again, Vladimar once advocated arming the Russian population and ordering them to shoot migratory birds in a bid to combat bird flu, and during the Alexander Litvinenko affair, suggested dropping nuclear bombs over the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to flood Britain so he isn't an authority on using his brain.
Meanwhile, and in keeping with the Triffids invasion, a meteorite was seen over Cuba earlier this week creating a sonic boom that shook doors and windows.
In a video on the TV newscasters website, CubaSi, described the skyline phenomenon as 'a light in the heavens and then a big ball of fire, bigger than the sun'.
Cuban authorities are now looking for any fragments that may have fallen to the earth.
I suggest sleeping with a bottle of Resolva or Weedol by the side of the bed and if anybody wants me, i will be on the Isle of Wight.

Russian Meteorite Brings Alien Death Virus

Strange isn't it that just when we are waiting for a 45 metre 'celestial cannonball across the bow of spaceship Earth' also known as asteroid 2012 DA14, a little one takes us all by surprise and sneaks in there to grab all the headlines.
Before today's amazing scenes in the Russian town of Cherbakul, the only other meteorite strike stories were of a dog being killed in Egypt and a boy being hit by one in Uganda but this falling ball of celestial rock was caught on film by countless Russian video camera owners as it exploded in the sky, generating a shock wave that injured almost 1000 people and damaged buildings.
The first, probably obvious, question to ask is was this in anyway connected to the arrival of the asteroid tonight, which is on track to make an unusually close pass to the Earth, coming within about 17,200 miles of us..
The European Space Agency has ruled out any link but Phil Bland, an asteroid expert at Curtin University, thinks they may be a bit quick to rule out asteroid debris preceding and trailing the much bigger object.
'It seems like an awful big coincidence if it’s not connected' he said and was quickly backed up by the Australian Astronomical Observatory, who said they were 'not so sure that the two things are not related'.
It is disappointing that all the energy on the end of times was used up at the end of last year on the Mayan calendar because this would have been a brilliant time for doomsayers, between the Russian strike this morning and the arrival of 2012 AD14 tonight, as the streets would have been full of people giving away their possessions, telling their managers exactly what they thought of them and blocking up the church confessional boxes. 
One good thing to come out of this is we get an explanation of what an asteroid is (small rock orbiting a star), a meteoroid (small pieces of space debris in space), a meteor (a meteoroid that has entered the earth’s atmosphere) and a meteorite (space debris that strikes the surface of the earth) if only because the presenters were getting angry tweets by pedantic amateur astrologers when they kept interchanging between referring to it as all four things in the coverage.
So the two events probably are not related and we are not all doomed and the asteroid will harmlessly brush past by us this time around but what a golden opportunity the crazies have missed but if they get their acts together, no reason why this bringing an alien death virus or this being fired by an alien spaceship couldn't take off after all, this was how both 'War of the Worlds' and 'Day of the Triffids' started.

Was Dresden Bombing Justified?

Whenever Allied war crimes are mentioned during the second World War, the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the first to be mentioned but a close second is the bombing of Dresden in East Germany which happened today in 1945.
A total of 1249 bombers of the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces dropped more than 4000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary devices on the city, destroying fifteen square miles and killing at least 25,000 and 68 years later
there are still discussions of whether the Dresden attacks were right.
The justification at the time was that the city was was a military and industrial target with major rail transportation and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers supporting the German war effort.
The evidence shows that the extensive industrial areas in the suburbs were not targeted, nor were the major bridges but on the destroyed list were 640 shops, 64 warehouses, 39 schools, 31 hotels, 27 insurance buildings, 26 public houses, 24 banks, 20 hospitals, 19 post offices, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 6 chapels, 3 theatres, 2 market halls, Dresden zoo and the waterworks.
An enquiry after the event stated the raid was justified to stop the retreating Germans from using Dresden as a base of operations and to to disrupt the industrial use of Dresden for munitions manufacture and secondary justification was to provide air support for the Soviet offensive toward Berlin and therefore the raid had legitimate military ends.
Still the argument goes on whether the bombing of Dresden was justified and necessary or immoral and a war crime.

Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory

Any conspiracy theory that classes David Icke as a credible source is on shakey ground from the start but nevertheless, the man who thinks that a secret group of reptilian humanoids are controlling humanity is being claimed by the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists who are questioning whether the Government were behind the December massacre. 
'Sandy Hook was a blatantly staged event with endless inconsistencies and countless contradictions' says Mr Icke which echoes such sites as this one that exclaim that 'No motive whatsoever has been established for Adam Lanza doing this, and there is no record of him doing anything cruel to anyone, ever, and yet they are forcing us to believe that he did it, without providing one speck of actual evidence, and despite lying to us from the beginning.'
The Obama administration perpetrated the hoax, the conspiracy theorists claim, in order to ratchet up support for tougher gun control measures and point to the 'smoking gun' which is a a photo of President Barack Obama, backstage at a Newtown vigil two days after the shooting with a young blonde girl sitting on his lap. The girl, the conspiracy theorists say, is six-year-old Emilie Parker who was one of the 20 child victims of the shooting and conclusive proof that something very fishy is going on. In fact, it's the dead girl's little sister.
Another Newtown conspiracy are that there were four members of the Israeli special forces and that crisis actors were employed by the government to give anguished interviews in order to drive home the need for gun control.
The idea is that the Obama administration was so desperate to bring in gun controls that they arranged for the massacre, picking small children to obtain the highest amount of sympathy. 
All repellent nonsense obviously and if anything it strengthens Obama hand on gun control because if anything, the thought that brain dead idiots like these conspiracy theorists own deadly weapons can only lead to even tougher gun measures.

Wrong Saint

Every year my husband asks me if i want some flowers for Valentines Day and i reply something along the lines of not wanting anything, it all being a commercial adventure to rip off people and we don't need a special day to show how much we love one another.
Of course if i don't get a card and flowers he will be sleeping on the coach until Boxing Day and scouring the internet for a doctor that could re-attach his testicles but the Church are now saying that St Valentine isn't the saint of love at all, that's Saint Raphael.
'Over the years St Valentine has come incorrectly to be associated with finding love' the Catholics Church explained 'He is the patron saint for those who have already found their soulmate, Saint Raphael is the saint for those looking for love'.
Clare Ward, spokeswoman for the Catholic Enquiry Office, the official body providing information on all things Catholic said 'while the distinction between the saints has always been clear within the Church it has, over the years, been blurred outside'.
The Mrs Ward obviously went mad and said 'There is a lot of evidence to suggest that young people who have tapped into prayer groups have found partners. Those who have exhausted traditional routes like online dating should try spiritual networks. Why not come along to a prayer group, it could be your lucky night.'
Yep, obviously been sniffing the incense again but there you have it, don't pray to Saint Valentine, pray to Saint Raphael and if you want a night of passion and a cup of tea with a game of bingo afterwards head down to the local Catholic Church.

Way Down Texas Way

I have never really understood why Texans go on about the Alamo, all 200 plus Texans got slaughtered in that scrap by Mexicans so hardly a highlight in Texan history but the Alamo is being mentioned again by supporters of Texas Independence Movement (TNM).
“We’re liable to fight the Alamo all over again,” one said surrounded by people in an Independence rally carrying placards bearing messages such as 'I want off the sinking ship' and 'Liberty or Death' and 'Remember the Alamo'. See, the Alamo again.
There has been mention of Texan independence for decades but the re-election of Barack Obama seems to have reinvigorated the TNM movement who claim they have over a quarter of a million members, all remembering the Alamo probably.
The movement has also got an international ally in the shape of that hotbed of Democracy, Belarus, who have accused the US Government of a humans right violation for not waving goodbye to Texas.
The TNM leadership are looking towards our shores for inspiration for their campaign, saying  “We look at the SNP in Scotland as a model for modern-day independence” which should sound alarms bells in your average Texan unless you are fed up with being employed and willing to take handouts from your neighbouring countries to keep your economy running.
It's unlikely that Texas will leave the Union, they only has 200 people turn up at the rally and we get a bigger turn out in the UK to watch people roll cheese down a hill, and besides, constantly asking people to remember a fight which they comprehensively lost isn't encouraging. 

Mistaken Identity?

From the pictures that i have seen of him, Chris Dorner is a black male so why the LA police shot two women delivering newspapers and a white male in a case of 'mistaken identity' is a bit worrying.
The former Los Angeles Police Department officer and US Navy reservist, has been charged with the killing of police officer Michael Crain and is wanted in connection with a string of related crimes. Authorities also believe he may be linked to a double-murder in nearby Irvine, but Dorner has managed to elude police in the days since and remains at large and threatening more deaths.
I lost everything,” Dorner wrote, “because the LAPD took my name and knew I was innocent.”
'I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own, I’m terminating yours' Dorner wrote in his manifesto, while explaining that the shooting spree is an act to 'reclaim my name', which be believes he lost when he was fired for making a false statement about his training officer.
Dorner alleged to the news media that she kicked a schizophrenic with severe dementia but an internal investigation cleared the officer and Dorner was kicked out of the police force.
With a well armed nutter running around the place the last thing the people of Los Angeles need are the trigger happy police shooting up the place as well.

Bye Bye Pope

Woo hoo, a new pope or to give him his full title, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Servant of the Servants of God, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, and my favourite because it makes him sound like a Roman monkey, Primate of Italy.
It also means i can wheel out my best Papal joke about hoping that someone with the name Sicle get's the gig next but unfortunately it seems that the next Pope will not just be a creepy man in a funny hat, but also the harbinger of the end of time as foretold by St Malachy, a 12th Century Archbishop. 
Malachy prophesied that the end would come with the election of the 112th pope from that day in 1143 and Pope Ratzinger is Pope number 111 from when St Malachy made his utterances.
The Catholic soon to be formerly known as the Pope has said that he is stepping down as Gods representative on Earth saying that at his age he cannot carry out all his tasks adequately and is losing strength in body and mind and not as is widely expected he woke up this morning and thought 'What the hell am i doing? I'm speaking for a magical man in the sky making people from dust?? I'm a sane person, get me out of here!!'
The Church of England, in the shape of the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, waffled something about God and Churches, i lost interest to be honest, but the favourite in the race to become Gods mouthpiece is Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson whose profile says that he has dedicated himself to performing pastoral work in the local area.
Boring, i prefer the saxophone and piano- playing jazz fan and personal friend of U2's Bono, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga from Honduras which might make the ceremonies a bit more interesting if he gets to the Vatican organ first and blasts out a bit of 'In The Mood'.
Before i go can i be the first to make the joke that soon he will be known as an ex-Benedict. If that joke turns up anywhere else i got in first.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar: The New Bogeyman

Now that Osama Bin Laden is swimming with the fishes in the Arabian sea,  the World has been on the lookout for a new bogeyman and after a few attempts to paint Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim jong un as the big bad, the powers that be seem to have decided that Mokhtar Belmokhtar is the one they will use to justify spending billions on military equipment to keep us safe in our beds.
It's quite easy to see why Mokhtar has been picked out of all the crazies as the Bin Laden replacement, the long grey beard, the fatigues and the fondness of posing in front of a video camera brandishing a copy of the Koran and a Kalashnikov while spouting religious nonsense.
He came to prominence after the Algerian gas plant hostage taking last month as the top banana in the North African Al-Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) but he has been knocking around terror circles for some time, starting out in Afghanistan alongside Bin Laden fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan before returning to his native Algeria and trying to overthrow the Government there.
Where Bin Laden had a $25 million bounty on his head, Belmokhtar has only $100,000 on his at present but he has made in on to the infamous Pentagon's list for targeted killing and drones have been dispatched to find the man who blew his own eye out with explosives so his reign as the new face of terrorism, not to mention his own face, may be short lived.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our new bogeyman and the War on Terror is back on track as we can only hope that his fellow terrorists don't allow him to handle any explosives because then we would have to start all over again and Ahmadinejad is proving too wise to be manoeuvred into public enemy number one and Kim jong un just looks like a perfectly harmless fat, boy band member.

Gonna Need Some New Slippers

While writing the previous post about the Earth spinning faster and what it would mean for mankind (having to buy new clocks & calendars was my conclusion) i came across something so bone chillingly scary that Climate Change is responsible for that, I had to take a few minutes to compose myself and eat the last few Malteasers that my husband was saving until later, it was that shocking.
The effects of Climate Change are well known, increased freak weather events and desertification and such but what i was not prepared for was bigger spiders.   
A group of Danish scientists have concluded a ten year study of the meat-eating wolf spider and found out that warming temperatures means more hunting time and the animals have been growing larger and are on average 2% bigger than they were at the start of the study.
As if giant, meat eating spiders stomping around the place in a few years isn't enough to worry about, the larger adult females are producing more offspring.
So when you are out buying new clocks and calendars to keep pace with the speeding up of the planets rotation, you might want to pick yourself up some bigger whacking slippers because the invasion of the giant, meat eating spiders is imminent and those puny fluffy things ain't gonna cut it when those massive spider mandibles are chomping on your legs.
I feel faint, where did my daughter put that Terry's Chocolate Orange she got for Christmas and was saving for later.

Gonna Need A New Clock

Sometimes, in those boring moments when i am sat in traffic or in the adverts breaks of , I do wonder what would happen if for some inexplicable reason the Earth began to spin around the other way. Obviously in the bit where it slowed down and stopped before spinning again the other way we would all be flung off into space but what effect would it have on those of us who had held on to something during the transition.
Then, being a girly, i think of shopping and buying new shoes and the Earth spinning thought goes away but as i cannot think of anything that could happen to make the Earth change its spinning pattern, i don't worry about it but then along comes science and tells us that the earth spinning could be speeding up due to the warming seas. 
Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany have said that as the temperature of the oceans rises, the resulting changes in density and circulation would cause a net transfer of mass to the higher latitudes closer to Earth's axis of rotation.
Nope, i didn't understand it either so he dumbed it down for us a tad, 'Think of an ice skater who is spinning. When you stretch your arms out you slow down, and when you bring your arms closer to your body you spin faster. Earth, it seems, will hug itself a little bit tighter because of global warming'.
So what will a more rapidly spinning Earth mean?
Shorter flights is my first thought, followed by that chic black dress i saw in Debenham's this morning (damn this female brain) and then how the clocks would need to change as the 24 hour day would be out the window, then how it would need to be a silver wall clock to go with the decor in the front room and they had some nice ones in Argos, then we would age quicker because shorter days would mean our birthdays would come around quicker unless we added some more days to the year which would mean new calendars.
We would probably weigh less but we would have to balance that with increased earthquake and volcanic activity due to internal heat generation but most importantly, the one crucial and critical thing that should not be overlooked is if i changed the curtains, i may be able to get one of those retro clocks with the wooden surrounds from Next.

Somethings Amiss For The Amish

An Amish elder, the appropriately named Samuel Mullet, has been jailed for 15 years over a series of beard and hair cutting attacks on fellow Amish in eastern Ohio. His attorney had asked for a sentence of two years or less, while the government had sought a life sentence for him.

15 years and the Government were seeking a life sentence for cutting someones hair??? 

Either there is more to this story than first seems or someone in the Ohio justice system needs to have the word  'Appeal' shouted at him very loud by a long bearded man in dungarees, a straw hat and probably holding a pair of scissors.  

What Has Europe Ever Done For Us?

I admit that with the economic turmoil in the European Union at the moment, this isn't the best time for us pro-Europeans to be pushing
for closer integration with Europe but with the likes of UKIP dominating the agenda, we have to make sure that the positive isn't drowned
out by the xenophobic, negative froth coming from the likes of Nigel Farage and his ilk. 
So what exactly has the EU done for us in Britain you may ask.
Well how about the obvious, being part of the world’s largest single market with an audience of 500 million which enables not just free trade in terms of the absence of customs duties or tariffs but a  common set of rules so that business does not have to comply with 27 different sets of regulations.
Another great move was the working time directive that set a maximum number of working hours, guaranteed breaks, gave temporary workers the same basic conditions of work as full-time colleagues and gave workers the right to take parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child.
Then there is the freedom to travel, live, work, study and retire anywhere in the EU, a benefit that 1.6 million Brits have taken advantage of and live outside of the UK in the EU. Working abroad has been facilitated through the mutual recognition of qualifications, enabling professionals to work in another EU Member State without having to sit further examinations. In addition to being able to live where they choose in the EU, pensioners can receive their UK state pension wherever they live in the EU.
They introduced an EU wide tariff for mobile phone calls and texts ending exorbitant costs for using your phone outside of your own country and British shoppers are now free to shop in any Member State without being charged customs or excise duties on goods for their personal use when they return home.
Cheap and air travel across the EU came about due to legislation with EU members rights protected if a flight is cancelled or who are denied boarding and the 2008 law requiring fares quoted by airlines to be all inclusive without hidden charges being added when you come to pay. 
We have the EU Health Insurance Card which enables all EU citizens to receive emergency health care on the same terms as the citizens of the EU country they are visiting while the beaches in Britain are safer due to EU Measures that set a standard for water pollution.
The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) has been very important in bringing criminals to justice across Member State borders, the UK issued 220 EAWs in 2009
The University mobility scheme ERASMUS, enables students and staff to study or work at another higher education institution in the EU benefiting over 7,000 British students annually and academic research projects receiving over €5 billion in research grants from the EU.
Another recipient of EU cash are the deprived regions of Europe with such areas in Britain allocated a total of €15.5billion from the European Structural Funds for 2000 - 2006.
Thanks to the EU, its citizens are protected from employment discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief, disability or age. Another EU directive set a minimal size cage for battery hens.
Most importantly, and the greatest reason for staying within the EU is the seat at the top table when it comes to World politics. It is arrogant to believe that Britain will hold much sway on a stage dominated by the powerhouses of America, Europe, China, Russia and the BRIC countries because we won't.
By being in the EU we are speaking as a representative of 500 million people, only China would have a larger population. ON our own, a nations of 60 million would not have much of a voice. 
The world is changing, sure the European project isn't perfect, but come out of it would not only damage us economically but politically as well and we would regret marginalising ourselves for quitting an ultimately powerful and prosperous bloc.
Removing ourselves from the EU, the UK would have zero influence and Britain would become that small island off the Coast of the Superpower withering to a painful and self-inflicted demise and why would we want to become that?

China & Japan Troubles Look Ominous

The sun is timed to blink out in approximately 5 billion years but it is unlikely that humans will still be around then to see it, the smart money is on us wiping ourselves out long before then and the prominent species being hedgehogs or worms who will be staring at the massive yellow ball going out.
There are many potential flash points in the World and a handful of countries doing there level best to make sure that they are top dog or take out the rest of us trying.
Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, America along with Britain and anyone with a natural resource we want and there is the one that keeps bubbling away, China and Japan who are having a barney over a row of small islands in the East China Sea.
In the latest development, Japan says a Chinese frigate locked weapon-targeting radar on one of its navy ships, a warning as Japan send more naval ships into the surrounding waters and flies warplanes over the disputed Diaoyu Islands and is trying its best to involve the US on its behalf in this dispute citing the US-Japan Defence Treaty.
Rather than cooling down, things seems to be in danger of escalating and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realise that it won't take much more provocation or an accident to push the stand off into something much more serious.
China are repeating the tactics of last year when they took control of the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea from the Philippines by sending their warships to the shoal and daring the Philippines to shift them or back down.
The Philippines blinked first that time but Japan seems to be made of sterner stuff and are ignoring the threats of 'serious consequences' being made by China who have got themselves into a situation where they don't want to be seen to back down but risk a possible conflict with their neighbour and the global superpower they are looking to oust if they don't.     
The stale-mate we have at the moment can't continue indefinitely but neither side look like backing down and the increasing military presence from both sides are beginning to bump up against each other in such a small area so that an 'accident' seems to be a matter of when and not if.
Out of all the tinderbox situations around the globe, this is the one that looks as though it could turn the nastiest.

Sochi 2014

It's exactly a year until the start of the Sochi Winter Olympics and although you would be hard pushed to find a place in Russia that has no snow in the wintertime, it looks as though that is exactly what they have done because Sochi is today snow free.
Admittedly that could be considered a bit of a drawback in a two week spectacular that depends on the stuff but the Sochi organisers are promising there will be enough snow during the Olympics even if they have to make it themselves.
“We can guarantee that the snow will be there” the Organisers have promised and one method they have tried out was to stockpile snow from this winter on mountain ice sheets for use next year.
They have also splashed out on 430 snow-making devices to keep the slopes supplied with fresh snow.
The Vancouver Winter Olympic organisers faced a similar problem in 2010 when a lack of snow meant they had to fill up trucks with snow from places where they had a lot of the white stuff and transport it into the city.
The Winter Olympics are great to watch, but only because we seem to enjoy seeing people fall over and the Winter Olympics has no shortage of slips and falls which end in a big cloud of snow.
Being from a country where the place comes to a halt at he first sign of snow, we are notoriously bad at sports that require being able to slide down the side of a mountain very fast but as this Winter Olympics is being held in a place that might not have any snow it might prove to be a plus for us.
I am also looking forward to Gerard Depardieu representing his new country in the luge.

Victory For Fairness

The votes have been counted and the winner of the Gay Marriage debate is the 21st Century who defeated the 19th Century view by 400 to 175.
It does seem incredible that in 2013 there are still those who consider it a God given right to treat less fairly one set of people over others and once again it is the religious leading the bigotry.   
A victory for commonsense, fairness and equality and marriage is now between two people who love each other which is as it should be.

Atheist Church Is The Wrong Idea

It's a strange kind of Church that preaches that when we die that's it, but there is a new breed of church springing up that isn't all about misbehave and there's a fallen angel waiting to poke you up the jacksy with a trident, this is the Atheist Church.
Atheism, i always thought, was considering the theists theory that God created us from a pile of dust and the rib of the first man and dismissing it as poppycock and then just ignoring it so to try and compete with it by copying it, albeit with an alternative message, doesn't make much sense to me.
Atheism shouldn't be trying to compete with religion, religion should just be ignored and not replaced by anything because there is no need.
The idea of a Church of Atheism is at best mocking religion and at worst an attempt to spread the word that there is no God in the same way that the Church try to spread the word that there is a God.
Both seem to want to drill into their congregations a message, there is even a Manifesto for Atheists, listing 10 virtues for the faithless.  
There is the danger that Atheism of this kind could developing into a cult with its own code of ethics, values, rules and belief system that tells Atheists how they should act or what they should believe.
Atheism should be less about trying to take on and compete with religion and more about just ignoring it or rather that's my idea of it.
You can't say to someone don't believe what they are saying but listen to me instead and I'll tell you what to believe, that's just wrong and we moan like nobodies business that the religio's try to shove their religion down our throats but this particular idea is almost shoving atheism down people's throats.
Religion is doing a fine job of eating itself, with each generation the grip gets a little looser, but let's not set up something to replace it with.
We should just leave religion to go away and not put anything in its place, not even Atheism because we don’t need anything in that particular space.

Another Lying Politician

I think Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne is going to need a bit more than an appearance on Oprah Winfrey to get any sympathy after being charged with persuading his then wife, Vicky Pryce, to take speeding points on his behalf so that he could avoid a driving ban.
The politician has spent the last three years describing the allegations against him as 'untrue' 'wild' and 'incorrect' backed down as he took the dock, stating that actually, he did get his wife to take the points for him after all.
After saying that he hoped the Crown Prosecution Service would find he had no case to answer and wishing to 'draw a line under the matter', it turned out that the investigation wasn't dropped and the evidence wasn't lost as he presumably hoped so with just a matter of presenting the evidence to the court, Huhne entered a guilty plea at the last minute to gain a lighter sentence as he now gets 10% off his sentence.
As we saw with the expenses scandal, our politicians will lie and cheat and consider us wrong for questioning them and once again someone who feels qualified to make laws for the rest of us to obey is revealed as believing they don't apply them personally.
Only yesterday, the day before his court appearance, he said 'I'm innocent of these charges and I intend to fight this in the courts and I'm confident that a jury will agree' which makes it even more shocking that 24 hours later he was saying 'Having taken responsibility for something which happened 10 years ago, the only proper course of action for me is to resign my Eastleigh seat in Parliament'.
Integrity and honesty not big for the British members of Parliament it seems and i hope that when the judge comes to hand down the sentence, he takes into account the wasting of the police and courts time.

Austerity Isn't Working

I'm not an Economist, i would be the first to put my hand up and admit i know nothing about how financial matters work but even i, with as much knowledge on the economy that would fit on a postage stamp can see that austerity isn't working.
All i have heard since the credit crunch as it was known in 2008 is that we need austerity to generate economic growth, but five years on we are heading for a triple dip recession so it has clearly failed.
Budgets have been cut, 750,000 public service jobs are for the chop, pay has been frozen, pensions have been shaken up and public services have been shut down but austerity has failed to create jobs or the anticipated economic growth and the AAA credit rating is in danger and we don't seem to have made a dent in the debt but still the government refuses to change course, they have even suggested that the austere measures have not been deep enough.
Albert Einstein's described insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results so maybe our leaders are insane because they seem to be doing the same thing over and over again and wondering why the economy isn't budging.
It is hard to keep the inner cynic in me in thinking that this is exactly where the Conservative Party want us to be because while the economy is in the doldrums, they can bring in a whole raft of privatisations under the guise of lightening the burden on the economy.
Even Thatcher didn't dare tinker with the NHS and she was the privatiser in chief but Cameron and the rest of the Bullingdon toffs have already began dismantling it and selling it off to the highest bidder citing the economic benefits to the country.
As long as they put it down to economic reasons, it looks as if we will swallow it and we have another two years of these guys yet unless the Lib Dems do the decent thing and pull the plug on the coalition.
The Dems will be decimated at the next election, this could be their final brave act of falling on their sword and saving the country from more austerity that seems to be piling on the pain for absolutely no reward but our Government is not changing direction and I have to wonder why not. 

It Sucks Here Romanians So Stay There

The curbs on Romanians and Bulgarians living and working in the UK are lifted next year and the Government have swung into
action by planning a negative ad campaign aimed at deterring an influx of immigrants from the two East-European states.
The gist of the campaign is that it rains all the time and we have no jobs so go somewhere else instead which seems a bit of a turnaround because in the GREAT Campaign announced by the Government five months ago, sent to the Romanian and Bulgarian embassies, we were inviting 'the world to take a fresh look at everything Britain has to offer' and 'We want to send out a clear message that Britain is one of the very best places in the world to visit, live, work, study, invest and do business'.
Now another arm of Government is trying to trash our own image by highlighting all the worst things about Britain hoping the Bulgarians forgo the delights of a single room bed and breakfast in windswept Bognor and stay in Sofia instead.    
Obviously Eastenders is not shown in Romania or Bulgaria, that would put across a great negative view of Britain as would a massive billboard at the French ports with Gideon Osborne's smirking face.
In reply to the British telling Romanians they are not welcome to our green and pleasant land, the Romanians have hit back with a series of ads saying why British people should move to Romania instead.
'The solution was to turn this false problem on its head and invite the British to invade us instead' said Mihai Gongu, Creative Director at GMP Advertising who created the campaign obviously unaware that Britain doesn't need an invite to invade anywhere, just having a natural resource we want seems to have done it for the last couple of hundred years.
The posters to go with the campaign includes zingers such as "Half of our women look like Kate. The other half, like her sister"Our draft beer is less expensive than your bottled water', 'we serve more food groups than pie, sausage, fish and chips', 'We speak better English than anywhere you've been in France' and 'we offer more choice than just two political parties'.
GMP Advertising said the campaign is meant to be friendly in nature: "We were amused, and most importantly we felt inspired. We tried our hand at British humour and, like with all things in the beginning, we probably didn't get everything right'.
Apart from the British humour bit and not getting anything right i would say it was a good attempt but there is probably a reason why Abu Hamza could count the number of Romanian comedians doing well in the UK on his right hand.  
The amount of Romanians and Bulgarians who are expected to land on our shores has been put at 250,000 but with the Government just taking us into a triple dip recession the next Government ad campaign will be aimed at trying to keep keep people here in the first place.

PS...just looked out the window and it's raining. Again.

Another Great Idea Rejected

Britain has a problem with its nuclear waste because the only place in the country that was willing to to dig a big hole and bury it have suddenly decided, actually, they don't want it there.
So here we are stuck with tonnes and tonnes of the glowing stuff but nowhere to store it, until i came up with a great idea, dump it all into a volcano. Problem solved now the only problem is where to hang all the Environmental awards that will be winging  there way to me.   
Or so i thought before the volcano geophysicists came along and ruined it all.
Apparently the problem is that in order to melt the uranium waste a required heat of  5,189˚F is needed and the hottest volcano we have is only a piddly 2,400˚F.
Another problem would be that the fuel rods wouldn't sink due to the thickness of the lava being continually pushed upwards and if the volcano ever erupted, ash, gas and radioactive fuel rods would be spewed for miles around along with radioactive lava which is apparently not a good thing.  
As my other idea of sticking it in a big box and posting it to Australia was rejected on moral grounds, it's back to the drawing board.

Any Reason For A Clooney Picture

George Clooney was enjoying a meal with some friends in a Berlin restaurant and was a bit concerned that the group were being a bit too lively and talkative so as way of apology to the nearby eaters, the actor paid the bill for the nearby table’s dinners.

You never see him in the gossip columns or bad-mouthing anyone and he cares about the environment and the feelings of other people.  It is an added bonus that he is so god-damned handsome. All around nice guy.