Bending Over Backwards To Be Swabbed

China has discovered a new way to test for Covid-19, and the swab isn't going up your nose or down your throat.
Over a million Beijing residents have been swabbed anally to test for infection by the more contagious British strain of Covid-19, according to Chinese authorities, who state that the method is more accurate than nasal swabs.
The science bit is that traces of the virus stay longer in the anus than in the respiratory tract and British scientists seem to agree although i don't know if it will replace the one up the nose here.
The Brits, as Corporal Jones was fond of saying, don't like it up 'em and my reaction would be the same as anyone's if a doctor approached me with a testing kit and asked me to bend over, they can take their swab and stick it right up their....oh.

Meddling With Elections

It is pretty unlikely that Russia's Putin has a videotape of Joe Biden locked away somewhere so he will not have the same blackmail power as he had over old pissy bed Trump and Biden has already warned him in a telephone call to not mess with US Elections anymore.
It is long thought that Russia helped Trump become the President and once he was there, the criticism of poisoning and invading their neighbours stopped but Biden is in the big seat now and messing in American elections is off limits, Amercian's meddling in other nations elections not quite so much.
Carnegie Mellon University has published research showing that the US has intervened in foreign elections over 80 times in a 47 different countries since 1945 including the 1996 Russian elections.
In one corner was the Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov who had a policy of rolling back the reforms that had emerged in Russia following the fall of Communism and in the other corner, the much more Western friendly and favoured American candidate Boris Yeltsin.  
Boris, fond of the falling down water and generally a bit of a numpty, was lagging badly behind Zyuganov until the Americans under Bill Clinton persuaded the IMF to provide the Yeltsin government with a loan of about $10bn, the second-largest IMF loan ever granted at that time, of which $1.3bn arrived before the election.
Yeltsin used these funds for a wide range of popularity-courting public spending sprees and the US also sent over campaign advisors to help organize Yeltsin’s re-election bid.
Yeltsin won the election and America got its patsy in the Kremlin, roll forward two decades and Russia got its own tiny handed patsy in the White House so the rules seem to be we can mess with yours but you try and mess with ours and we will really, really cry a lot about it.

GameStop??

I don't really understand what is going on with the Gamestop story but as it involves people sticking it to 'The Man', i'm all for it.
As i understand it, GameStop is an American high street shop that sells games, consoles and other electronics which was struggling due to the pandemic and Hedge Funds were short selling their shares, hoping to make a bundle when it failed and the shares price dropped.
Apparently, Hedge Funds borrow shares in the company and sell them, with a promise to buy them back at a later date when they are cheaper and making themselves a packet.
The analogy on Radio 5 this morning was to imagine borrowing your friends phone and agreeing to give it back to them in a month.Then you sell it to someone else for £100, again promising to buy it back off them in a month but a month later the phone is  not so new and exciting anymore so you buy it back for £50 and congratulations, you've made £50!
Obviously a massively simplified explanation of short selling and hedge funds make billions doing it and that's what they tried to do with the GameStop shares betting they would lose value but huge numbers of people in the Reddit forum bought shares in GameStop and the demand raised its share price massively, 700% in a week, and everyone who had banked on it dropping in value had to buy their shares back to prevent bigger losses, losing them billions.
Obviously the Hedge Funds are not happy about it and anything which makes them not happy makes me happy although i am not sure what Elon Musk's role in it is and i swing dramatically between hating and loving him so he is back in my good books at the moment.

Johnson Doing All He Could

Although we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that he's both, either Boris Johnson is completely shameless or totally clueless as he states that despite the grim counter ticking over to 100,000 deaths, him and his Government have done 'all that we could to minimise deaths' in response to a question of why the UK has one of the worst mortality rates in the world.
Predictably, everyone piled in on the hapless Prime Minister including bereaved families, government scientific advisers and public health experts who all rattled off a list of measures the government had taken that had been too little, too late or not at all.
The Office of National Statistics data which is more accurate than the Governments figures show that over 100,000 people in the UK had already died with Covid on their death certificate by 7 January, nearly three weeks ago, and put the total as of today almost at 120,000.
Johnson says that he takes full responsibility for the Governments strategy and an inquiry into his handling will surely find that the chaos of test and trace, the ignoring the scientific advice, the delays in locking down the country and not controlling who came in and out of the country until 12 months after everyone else will prove that he really didn't do all he could, or worse, he did and this was Johnson doing his best.

Beautifully Sad

So much death and sadness during the pandemic but amidst it all one story from the Royal Stoke Hospital bought a lump to my throat today.

An elderly couple seriously ill with Coronavirus were brought together by hospital staff so they could share their final days after 67 years together. The couple were put next to each other so they could hold hands and listen to Glenn Miller, their favourite musician.

Scott Summerfield, who was part of the team which organised the gesture, tweeted: "A Couple on the ward dying from Covid. Been together for 67 years. We have rearranged the ward so they can be together & hold each others hands, we have put their favourite music on Glenn Miller so they can spend some quality last few hours together'.

Beautifully sad.

Dykes, Cocks and Fanny's Banned by Facebook

Facebook have banned local residents of certain British towns and cities from mentioning the names of their places as it falls foul of their algorithm so if you live in Wash Dyke, Forest Dyke, Cockermouth, Cockfosters, Great Cockup and Little Cockup, Cockplay, Three Cocks, Fanny Barks, Fanny Avenue, Fanny Hands, Fingringhoe, Honey Knob Hill, Devils Dyke, Clap Hill, Shaggs, Droop, you may want to switch to Twitter.

EU Wrong In Vaccine Row

Something that i find really cringe-worthy is the jingoistic flag waving some people get up to and us Brits are no exception, we can wave our Union Flag as long and as loud as anyone so my position in the Vaccine argument currently going on between the UK and the EU is not from a position of xenophobia but a position of the EU trying to hide their mistakes by blaming the UK.    
The EU is furious about AstraZeneca's vaccine delays and has accused AstraZeneca of breaking its contract by not supplying enough vaccine doses and is demanding that the company divert some of the vaccines destined for the UK to them fulfill contractual obligations.
The EU is angry for the simple reason that Europe's approach to vaccination has been stuttering and sluggish, the UK signed a deal for 100 million doses in May, three months before the EU signed its contract for 300 million.
The EU leaders are saying that it should not receive fewer doses just because the UK signed a contract with the company earlier but on this occasion, Brussels are wrong and are trying hard to deflect blame from their own failures.

Boris on Donald

Boris Johnson on Donald Trump pre-Presidency:

"I think Donald Trump is clearly out of his mind" 
"Beholds a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States"
"I wouldn’t want to expose Londoners to any unnecessary risk of meeting Donald Trump"
"I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump" 
"What he’s doing is playing the game of the terrorists and those who seek to divide us"  
"I am genuinely worried that he could become president"

Boris Johnson on Donald Trump during Presidency

"I don’t see why he’s any less of a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama"
"He has many, many, good qualities and is making America great again"
"He is having results, and we should pay tribute to that"

Boris Johnson on Donald Trump post Presidency:
"Glad to see the back of him"

More faces than a clock factory but then we always knew that anyway.

Pound Being A Dick Over Tokyo Olympics

I do love watching the the Olympics and Paralympics even if it is on at stupid o'clock due to be playing out in some far flung part of the globe but the draw of watching the second heat of the 200m butterfly at 3am means a heavy caffeine and nicotine next day and i'm fine with that.
The 2020 events were to be held in Japan last year until the Coronavirus pandemic put paid to that idea and it has been pushed back to this year but the rise of several new Coronavirus variants and the steep jump in cases in Japan which reported a record number of cases this week, means that there are murmers that the 2021 version could be pushed back again or even cancelled altogether.
In a survey conducted amongst the Japanese population, 34% believe the upcoming Summer Games should be postponed further while 34% want it scrapped completely due to Covid-19 concerns but the Japanese Government are insisting that there was no truth in the claims they are considering cancelling it and are determined to see the event take place.
Having spent £20 billion on constructing sporting venues, infrastructure, and other preparations for the event, you can understand why they are keen to do the damned thing, the sponsorship and TV rights alone would go some way towards balancing the books and the cash is probably behind the desperation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to get the athletes running, jumping and throwing this summer.
What has been suggested and has been firmly WTF'd by most people is the idea that nations find a way to vacinnate the athletes first so that the Tokyo Games can go ahead safely in July.
While insisting that they are not calling for athletes to 'queue jump ahead of the vulnerable and key workers' the IOC called for exactly that with the unfortunately named IOC Vice President, Dick Pound, saying that her thought that the public would probably be okay with it  if athletes did jump the queue if it ensured that the Tokyo Olympics could go ahead.
To their credit the British Olympic Association and UK Sport have said: 'The priority has to be the people who need it most, frontline workers, the elderly and the vulnerable. There will come a time, hopefully ahead of the Olympic Games, when the athletes can be considered for vaccination but we’ll only do that when it’s appropriate'.
Good for them and i hope more nations come out and say the same because keeping people safe should always trump a sporting event, regardless of much money it will lose if it gets cancelled or at the very least, pushed back to whenever it is safe to be held.

Climate Change Didn't Self Isolate in 2020

There was quite a lot going on during 2020 but something that didn't stop and self isolate was our warming Planet and unfortunately there is no vaccine for what is coming.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reached record levels in 2020, hitting 417 parts per million in May and the last time CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million was four million years ago. Humans have piled 100ppm in the last 60 years alone, an amount that it took Nature 10,000 years to increase it by at the end of the last ice age
The year 2020 was 1.2C hotter than the average year in the 19th Century, Europe had it's hottest year ever and the World experienced it's joint hottest year, tying with 2016 as the warmest triggering the largest wildfires ever recorded in the US states of California and Colorado, and the fires in eastern Australia which turned the sky black.
The temperature reached 38C in Siberia, the hottest ever recorded within the Arctic Circle which saw the sea ice area at its second lowest on record which has the knock on effect of less area of white to reflect the heat from the Sun back out into space, leading the Arctic to heat twice as quickly as the rest of the world and more sea means more absorption of heat, fueling global warming further.
Across the northern hemisphere, there was less ground that remains frozen all year round which has released billions of tonnes of CO2 and methane which is usually locked away in frozen ground, further clogging the atmosphere.
The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his State of the Planet speech that we are at the threshold of wrecking our own Planet but the Planet won't care because to be honest, without us, it's job would be much easier without us messing it up.
It isn't in the business of keeping us alive and stop us from doing stupid things like poisoning our own air and water, we are very low down on it's list of things to give a toss about.

Biden Saying All The Right Things For Now

Put to one side all the jingoism and God blessing of America that seems to come with any American pomp and circumstance, the Joe Biden inaugural speech was a good one, he said a lot of stuff about unity and the line about repairing alliances by 'leading not merely by the example of our power, but by the power of our example' was a great quote and we can only hope that America does because America hasn't been great and that was before Donald Trump came along and turned it into the global laughing stock it became since he took office.     
Inauguration speeches always sound out hope for a better future and i don't particularly care what Biden does on America, it is the foreign policy we look at outside of the American borders.
He has promised to immediately re-sign the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran Nuclear deal and rejoin the World Health Organisation making the World a slightly cleaner, safer and healthier place but Trump, for all his many considerable faults, never sent his nation to war unlike every President back to Jimmy Carter in the 70's.
Trump promised at his inauguration that 'American carnage would stop now', which is not quite what came to pass considering the carnage on American streets at his prodding, the promise to 'drain the swamp' lasted days before Kellyanne Conway was urging American's to 'Buy Ivanka’s stuff' from a homeware product line endorsed by the President’s daughter.     
He even promised to 'free the world from the miseries of disease' although with 400,000 dead Americans dead from a disease he ignored, ridiculed and dismissed, it didn’t quite work out that way.
So America has a new President, one that has to be better than the last one mainly because nobody can be that bad again, and he is saying all the right things but we don't want the America we had before, we want a new, less warmongering and arrogant one so time will tell if we get that from the 46th President or it's business as usual.

Taxi For Trump

 A taxi pulls up outside the White House and Donald Trump puts his bag in the boot and climbs inside and tells the driver to take him home.

'I thought i recognised that dodgy barnet, hiya Mr Trump. I'm glad i got that suspension reinforced on that side. Where's that you say? New York? I don't usually go that far north, I'll tell you that for nothing. The traffic's a bit slow today around here, lots of people, certainly more people than the last inauguration, Oi Darling! This is a street, not a bleeding waiting room!
Don't get me wrong, Mr Trump, it's not that I have a problem with your type, Republicans i mean, I'm not prejudiced nor nothing, some of my best fares are awful racists, but we don't have many one term Presidents round this way. To be perfectly honest, the last Republican wasn't very good either so if somebody offered me the choice of having my knackers slammed in the car door or another four years of you, i'd be nursing some heavily bruised plums right about now if you know what i mean. Right, watch me cut this muppet up. Lovely.
So you and Melania got to move back to New York now then, don't blame you for leaving Washington DC, too many Trump supporters there wrecking the place after you told them to. Bit of an own goal for you that one wasn't it, who would have guessed so many of your supporters were such violent morons. Oi Sweethreat, pick a lane why dontcha.  
'Ere, maybe you can have a medical to get the ol' noggin looked at. You might not want to mention your idea about the bleach treatment in front of them though. I don't mean to get personal, but what do they do in those medicals? Do they shove anything up you? I wouldn't have it, I'll tell you that much. They can stick their probes up their...blimey, get a look of the bumpers on that!
Hey Donny, can i call you Donny? Donny, so do you think that you lost because most of your supporters were the ones saying there was no such thing as Coronavirus before dying of Coronavirus? ... Bless 'em, bunch of Muppets. C'mon luv, you could drive a bleedin' tank through that gap.
Your very quiet if you don't me saying, i thought you would be more chatty, at least throw out a few lies about how great you were, especially as you can't tweet anymore, you being a danger to people and all that. Look at this idiot...Oi, where you learn to drive you clown!
What happened to your wall then? My mate reckons if you had spent less time dicking about on your phone and playing golf you might have built it, your golf game must have improved brilliantly while you was President, because you sure wasn't spending much of your day doing Presidential things were you. Worst President ever i hear but c'mon, there's been 40 odd so at least one of them must have been worse than you.     
Here we are then, Mr Trump, New York. I would stop, but I don't trust these New Yorkers with my alloys. I do have to ask you though, Mr Trump, what are you going to do now you ain't the main guy anymore standing in front of crowds of people? My brother-in-law was in a band in the 80's and used to play in front of thousands and he says it's not all it's cracked up to be. You can ask him yourself... 'Ere, I had that Barack Obama in the back of my cab once, huge hands he had, massive they were.
What? No tip, you tight fat basta....

Blue Monday

Blue Monday usually falls on the third Monday of every New Year, and is considered the most depressing day on the calendar due to temperature, days since the last pay day, days until the next bank holiday and the average hours of daylight and today is the third Monday so try to have too much of a miserable day everyone and watch out for those unpredictable mood swings.
Despite all that's going on, everything is going to be OK. I promise. Don't worry, i wouldn't lie to you, trust me, everything is going to be OK, even though it's not.
Things are scary, but they could be worse. Actually, they're going to get worse but i did say i wouldn't lie to you. Nope, i won't do that. Glass half full and all that but then it doesn't matter if the glass is a glass of cold sick.
Everything is going to be OK. There will be these moments when everything works out brilliantly and the secret is to not over analyse everything that happens in your day, imagine the events in your day like a cheese and pickle sandwich, taken altogether you have a huge plate full of cheese and pickle sandwiches and they are all yours! Savour them and eat them all up. Yummy.
Now consider that when you're out of sandwiches, you will cease to exist. Gone in a poof of smoke so slow down eating those sandwiches, chum!
Take tiny bites. Enjoy but eat your cheese and pickle sandwiches wisely. Live each day as if it could be your last, screaming and crying and begging because holy Christ on a pogo-stick it's your last day so on second thought, live each day as if it was your second to last. Yes, that's much better.
Hug your loved ones, tell your friends how much you appreciate them, make love or paint a picture, watch the sunrise and leave the screaming and crying and begging until the following day.
Everything is going to be OK. Never lose hope, there's always hope although hope doesn't mean things will actually turn out for the best but remember that despite everything, someone, somewhere, is having the best day of their life, not you obviously but you can still embrace the day, enjoy the cheese and pickle sandwich and defiantly knock back that glass of cold sick and say i am here World whatever you throw at me, even if we really have jiggered the entire effing lot, well done us, i will carry on because life seems pretty good from here.
Ok sometimes it's like an orgy with virgins, i mean it sounds like a good idea, then you get in there and you're kind like, no, don't put that there..., anyway, you get my point, i'm chalking today up as a win or a score draw or even a respectable loss but whatever, Blue Monday can sod off, everything will turn out well because despite everything, i have a glass half full of cold sick and just like every other day, i will wing it in the desperate hope that something better will come along, right? Right...?

Was Trump And His Supporters Fascists?

Using the George Orwell essay 'What is Fascism' as a guide, i previously mentioned that according to his agenda, Donald Trump comfortable satisfies the Fascist criteria of scapegoating and demonising other groups to gain a common enemy to unite against (Mexicans, the media, Muslims), refer to a glorious past and wish to return to it (Make America Great Again), not allowing dissent or challenge (75 members of his staff who have either been sacked or resigned under pressure), rid their Government of the laws and decisions of previous leaders, to create their own, (roll back of Obama's laws and policies), use the nations resources to build up the military to which they threaten weaker and smaller nations (threatened to destroy North Korea and Iran, discussed sending the military to overthrow the Venezuela leadership while significantly increasing military spending from 2.4% to 4.7% to $750 billion) which all seem pretty conclusive.
Understandably, the right wing object to the word 'fascist' to describe them and the man at the head of their cause but it is not easy to find another word to describe them.
Their case isn't helped by Trump saying he won the election he lost and then incited brainwashed followers to storm democratic institutions to overturn the election result, followers who included men dressed in 'Camp Auschwitz' T-shirts, waving Confederate flags and making 'Sieg Heil!' salutes.
I think most people who have reflected on it will agree that Trump is sociopathic, self serving, manipulative and amoral who has traits of a fascist, i suppose you could argue about how far along the fascist line Trump went but definetly a far right authoritarian white supremacist and to me that sounds, smells and looks like a fascist, albeit a failed one as he slinks off defeated.
The worry for America is the 74 million supporters who could now be looking for a leader with the same fascist tendencies who is a bit smarter and competent than this one was.

Happy To Help Joe

Interesting fact on the News earlier that there are more US Troops protecting Washington DC then there are US Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan combined which should give American's pause for thought about just what has happened to them over the past four years after voting a moron into office although it probably won't, 70 million American's looked at what the idiot had done during his spell in power and thought hmmm, so he may have admitted being a sex offender, he may have dismissed a virus that has killed over 300,000 of us so far and put us in a position to suffer more from climate change and backed racists and fascists but i think i will give him another go.  
I said here that now that Joe has beaten the laughably awful Trump, his first day should be spent on the phone to Paris to returning to the Paris Accord on Climate Change, Tehran to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal and Geneva to beg the World Health Organisation to take America back.
Today, Biden has outlined his plans and agreed with me that he will sign a series of executive orders in his first days in office, attempting to roll back damage done by Donald Trump, which includes returning the US to the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal and although he did not mention rejoining the World Health Organization specifically although he previously mentioned it would be a priority so maybe that one slipped his mind, he is 78 remember.
Ever since the Democrats got my lightbulb changed last year, i have looked favourably upon them and they are obviously reading this blog so my next suggestion after the phone calls and sorting out the Coronavirus that Trump allowed to ravash the country while he played golf, my next suggestions would be sort out your bat shit crazy gun laws, don't invade anyone, stop backing Israel in their genocide of Palestinians, move the date of election and the date you take over closer together, ditch the pardon rule which makes a mockery of your justice system and pass a law that David Boreanaz HAS to be in every single TV show you sell to Britain.  
You are very Welcome America.

Vitamin D And Coronavirus

It was very early in the lock-down so probably end of March, start of April time, that a medical person was on the television discussing why so many BAME people were catching Coronavirus and they wheeled through the usual suspects such as the type of work they do and more interaction within their community when the doctor threw out that it could even be a Vitamin D thing as BAME people's darker skin meant they took in less of it from the Sun.
I thought at the time that made sense and then promptly forgot about it until someone else mentioned the other day that research shows that up to 80% of people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 are deficient in this vitamin.
A quick Google search brings up a The Lancet article published in August 2020 that explains how Vitamin D supplements in the shape of Cod Liver Oil was used in the prevention or treatment of acute respiratory infections dates back to the 1930s and trials conducted from 2007–20 revealed protective effects of Vitamin D against acute respiratory infections. It then goes on to use lots of medical terms such as Vitamin D supporting 'innate antiviral effector mechanisms, including induction of antimicrobial peptides and autophagy which regulate immunopathological inflammatory responses in the context of respiratory infections' which may have well been written in Latin for as much sense they made, but it ended by saying that there were ongoing trials to see if the Medical Community could follow up the initial trials which showed taking Vitamin D might reduce the impact of COVID-19 in populations where Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent.
In the Summer, the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin advised its members to take the nutrient, advising that although it is not official policy: 'We believe that vitamin D3 deficiency is a major risk factor for severe Coronavirus infection, for which there is accumulating evidence' the letter said. 'People born with darker skin receive less UV light in the deeper layers where D3 is made, and so are prone to more severe D-deficiency at the end of winter in northern latitudes than their fairer-skinned counterparts'.
Government Minister David Davis, holder of a molecular science degree, urged the health secretary, Matt Hancock, to review the evidence and consider a free supplement scheme to reverse vitamin D deficiencies, citing the letter sent by the BAPIO which was duly ignored but since then studies conducted around the world have been building evidence of vitamin D’s efficacy was growing.
Studies in France, South Korea, Spain and Singapore have made similar reports so there is growing scientific evidence that an effective, cheap and easily obtainable treatment may have been hiding in plain sight all along.

Dead Or Alive

Having the medical knowledge of a house brick, i always assumed like most people, that a vaccine contained a weakened, harmless version of whatever it was you was trying to be inoculated against so the body would generate the required anti-bodies to overwhelm the weak disease and would then stand guard ready in your body in case the full blown thing happened along.    
Rather kindly the scientist didn't slap his forehead and mumble under is breath about being surrounded by idiots but patiently explained that it is a harmless version of the disease, actually completely harmless because it is dead and one of the laws of medicine is dead things don't come alive.
Putting aside questions about how could he then explain the coming Zombie Apocalypse, i just looked confused instead so he went on to say that the body will recognise that this new thing shouldn't be there and is attacking the body, albeit dead, so it sends it anti-bodies to attack and nullify it and then makes the decision that the anti-bodies had better hang around a while in case there is another attack and over time, as the threat of another attack resides, the anti-bodies go off to do whatever unused anti-bodies do.
Nodding as if i understood what the hell he was talking about, he then said that actually they do sometimes use weakened versions of whatever it was they were inoculating against also for the same reaction which i realised as i was driving back to work meant that i was kinda right all along, go me.
Makes me glad i never asked about the Zombie Apocalypse after all.

Medical Myths (But Keep Them To Yourself)

As we get older and have children, we find ourselves repeating the same things to them that we were told as children so its's eat 5 piece of fruit a day, don't swallow your chewing gum as it stays in your stomach for years, don't go swimming until after 2 hours after eating, reading in poor light will strain your eyes and sitting too close to the TV will damage your eyesight, drink 8 glasses of water, don't shave your legs as the hairs will grow back darker, wear a hat as you lose most heat out of your head, and don't go outside with wet hair.  
The Medical Journal has debunked a list of Medical Myths and it turns out i had been walking around in my youth munching apples, spitting out my gum at boys i didn't like, missed meals to go swimming and arrived late everywhere because i had been blow-drying my hair and all for nothing, thanks Mum.  
The actual advice is eat MORE fruit, the five number was just a number plucked out the air by doctors to give people a target and although many of the ingredients in gum are indigestible and it's sticky nature, the digestive system happily passes it along through the digestive tract and into the toilet bowl as it does with anything else.
The many teenage summer afternoons i spent choosing between sweltering with sand covered chips and limp cheese sandwiches or a dip in the cool waters of the sea but i could have done both because diving in before the required 120 minutes have elapsed does not result in you drowning from cramps, just means you are swimming while hungry.    
Reading until you can't see the words on the page is fine, it won't cause any damage to your eyes and while the sitting too close to the TV will damage your eyes was true when the first TV's came out, that was because early TV sets emitted radiation and have emitted negligible amounts of radiation since the 1960's so i didn't need to move back during all those 1980's Top of The Pops when WHAM! was on.
We should consume 8 glasses of water a day but the advice is 'take in about eight glasses a day', which we mostly do anyway through our food so i could have got away with 2 and all those painful leg waxes because as i was told 'nobody likes a woman with hairy legs' was a waste of good screaming because the hair that grows back is exactly the same as the coloured hair that you just ripped from your follicles.
All that time spent washing and drying your hair before teasing it into just the right style, only for your mum to then plonk a hat on your head on the way out because 'You lose most of your body heat through your head' but it turns out arriving for a date with that hot boy with flat hair and a bobble hat was all for nothing because you lose as much through your head as you do through any exposed skin and i could have gone out with wet hair because viruses and bacteria cause colds, not a low temperature.
Now that i know all that you would think i wouldn't be nagging the kids to eat more fruit or wear a hat when outside or even swap my daughters waxing kit for a Gilette razor but nope, i'm going to keep the propagating the myths because if i had to endure them, so can they.

Coronavirus End Game

As the rollout of the covid-19 vaccine rolls out, so does the demand for who should amongst the first to be immunised.
First up was the most vulnerable, the over 80's, and next is NHS staff and that is as it should be, they are in the malestrom of Coronavirus in hospitals, the actual place where Covid-19 victims go so no argument there that they should be amongst the very first to roll up their sleeves.
Next it should be the over 70's and care home workers but suddenly other professions are trying to pencil their names in the top tier to be done next, teachers police officers and today shop workers and Postal workers have thrust their hands up and said them next although i think the Sean Dyche, the Burnley
manager's idea that footballers should be towards the front of the queue was a risible as it sounded.
What we do know is that the rollout is not happening fast enough and although we are being told how many people are getting their first dose, AstraZeneca have been asked by the Government not to divulge weekly figures on how much vaccine is being handed over the NHS 'for security reasons'.
Doctors are reporting that they could immunise many more people than they have vaccine for which makes it sound as though there is a problem with supply but the Government must be confident that it will soon not be a problem as it has announced that it will roll out 24/7 vaccinations centres which is great news because the quicker we can get people immunised, the quicker we can cut the appalling death rates.
This Government have been slow and dithering when dealing with the pandemic, lets hope that they get this bit of the end-game right and then can come the reckoning because Bioris Johnson and his pals need to have their feet held to the fire for all their incompetence.

Eat Up Kids!

If the Government have handed Chartwells, a private company contracted by the Department for Education, a contract for £30 per child for school meals for 10 days, why have the hampers turned up with only £5.22 worth of food in it?
In a widely shared photo of the hamper's recieved, we can see Bread (89p), Beans (85p), Carrots (15p), Apples (42p), Potatoes (22p), Tomato (11p), Cheese (£1.45), Frubes (33p), Pasta (10p), Soreen (40p) and Bananas (30p) which comes to £5.22
A spokesperson for Chartwells said: 'We take our responsibility to provide children with access to nutritious food very seriously' and that their hampers 'follow the DFE specifications and contain a variety of ingredients to support families in providing meals throughout the week'.
The kids may not be doing very well out of it, nor the public purse which is paying for it but Chartwells are doing very nicely thank you, £25 profit per child, kerching!!!

Protect The NHS But The Tories Never Did

Matt Hancock was amongst several Conservative Ministers doing the Sunday mornings TV rounds today urging people to stay home, protect the NHS and save lives as the latest variant of the Coronavirus rips through the country, not the UK Variant, they don't like it being called that, the new variant which is 50% more infectious.
Of course we should all agree with the Conservative message, it is all about saving lives, but protecting the NHS sticks in the craw a bit because protecting the NHS was something the Conservatives had been willfully not doing until the pandemic hit.
In the election of 2010, David Cameron made a big show of using his disabled son as proof that the NHS would be safe in his hands, well that pledge immediately fell by the wayside as the Government forced tens of billions of NHS cuts which closed 44 hospitals and treatment centres losing 15,000 beds, made 20,000 nurses redundant and closed support facilities.
The Tory Government under Cameron, May and now Johnson cronically underfunded the NHS, raising the annual budget by 1% each year instead of the historical 4% it needs each year so it isn't hard to do the sums and arrive at a deliberate ploy to underfund and run the NHS down to such a point  that Private hospitals and medical insurance becomes the only game in town.
Those 15,000 beds, 20,000 extra nurses and 44 hospitals would certainly come in handy right about now so yes, the NHS is in crisis but it was before the outbreak due to a right wing Government hell bent on running down the NHS so protect the NHS which is a darn sight more than the these Conservatives ever did.

Burning Down The House

Interesting characters at the Trump inspired riots at the Capitol building, obviously all right wing deplorables but some went the whole hog and dressed up as Nazi's but i also saw some Vikings and a few dressed in the King Richard Crusader garb circa 1180.
The Vikings were all about the destruction so that makes sense and the Crusades main aim was to beat up on the foreigners who believed something different to them so that ticks the brainless right wing mindset also.
Something that has been given a good airing on the news channels is the reminder that the Brits set fire to the Capitol building and several other places back in 1814 as part of the 1812 war, to be fair we did have to travel there and airplanes hadn't been invented so explains why we were two years late.
It was the Presidential Mansion then, the White paint was applied afterwards to hide the scorch marks per a myth but the Brits burnt the place to the ground and all that was left was a couple of exterior wars which then had to be pulled down anyway so there were no scorch marks.  
The Brits did plan to burn down all of Washington, President James Madison had run off screaming like a big girls blouse when the Brits turned up with the matches but they were foiled by a heavy thunderstorm which kept putting out the fires so they gave up the plan and content with what they had done, returned back to Blightly for tea and crumpets.
I'm sure the Nazi's would have done much worse to Washington if the Blitzkrieg had made it across the Atlantic and the Vikings did make it that far and considered it not worth bothering with but rather than the Crusader uniform, they probably should have gone with the British red coat uniform of the early 19th Century which would have been much more historically accurate but then i guess, the useful idiots following Trump are more likely to open a colouring book rather than a history book.

What To Do With Excess Vacinnes

The Government website advises us that with the additional 7 million doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine it has secured, the UK now has access to a total of 357 million doses of vaccines from 7 different developers, 100m University of Oxford/AstraZeneca, 40m BioNTech/Pfizer, 7m Moderna, 60m Novavax, 60m Valneva vaccine, 60m GSK/Sanofi Pasteur and 30m Janssen vaccine.
Some are still in clinical trials and may yet prove to not be successful so the Government would have done our money on them but of the three approved so far, our fridges and freezers are currently filling with 147 million with a potential other 210 million to come.
With a population of 65 million, and allowing for wholesale take up and two vaccines per person, we will require 130 million so already we have 17 million definitely left on the shelf and potentially 227 million and as far as i understand it they have a shelf life of 6 months so that is a lot of vaccine going spare.
I don't know what the Government plan to do with them, short of giving all Brits 3 double doses each to use it up, the usual practice with excess flu vacinnes is to treat them as hazardous waste and return them in the appropriately sealed containers to the manufacturer for incineration which seems a criminal waste when the World is screaming out for the vaccine.
Due to the timeline of the 6 month expiration date it is doubtful that we would be able to receive it and pass it on to some other nation but surely we can redirect a few tens of million of doses of it to be delivered somewhere else, it would go some way to making up for the nasty crap we did to those places during our appalling empire days.

Removing Trump

Donald Trump's Presidency was always going to end with a bloody mess and his actions yesterday, inciting a deadly protest and the storming of the Capitol building to disrupt Congress's formal confirmation of Joe Biden's win, was it.
I'm not sure why it is only now that the Government are trying to decide if they can invoke the 25th Amendment and have him removed immediately as he is 'unable to discharge the powers and duties' due to mental illness although it has been obvious from the very first day that he couldn't be trusted to run a bath let alone run a country.
He came into the Presidency boasting about being a sex offender, defended right wing racists in Charlottesville by saying they were good people, dismissed the Coronavirus pandemic killing his own citizens and sits not so proudly as the nation with the worst death toll, he put forward the idea of injecting bleach as a cure for the virus and has refused to accept the result that he lost the election and that's without all the other mentally retarded stuff he has said and done which would have ended many other Presidential careers.
Whether it is mental illness or just the pathetic actions of a man born into privilege used to getting his own way and throwing a toddlers temper tantrum when he doesn't get it i don't know nor care, it’s just a shock that the rest of the people in power have waited until the last fortnight of his Administration before realising he is mentally unfit to Govern.
Some have said it is too late to impeach him or to remove him and to just wait out the 13 days left until a grown up takes over but that would let him off the hook for inciting the insurrection by his supporters who judging by the pictures, didn't even have the required numbers of brain cells to hide their faces while they rampaged throug the buildings and fought with police.
The Americans once rid themselves of the British Royals because they believed that they didn't need some stupid, unqualified person to automatically lead them just because they were born into wealth and power. As Trump and Bush before him proved, they elect those people now.

Christmas Wasn't Worth It

We were warned that the figures from the Governments ridiculous Christmas relaxation would be coming around the 5th, 6th and 7th of January and yesterday we saw 62,000 new cases and 860 deaths and today 62,300 new cases and 1,041 deaths and experts are saying that looking at the trajectory of the graphs, the numbers will be sadly going up for a few more days yet as infections from the New Years celebration numbers come through.
In total the devastating death toll strands at 77,346 and 2,836,801 Brits have now officially been infected with the virus and of the 26,600 hospital beds available for Covid 19, their are 3,400 more Covid 19 patients than beds so the NHS is overwhelmed already.
As feared, Christmas was not worth the cost in dead bodies now laying in Hospital morgues and it just heaps further incompetence on the fatal incompetence of this Government who must face a reckoning soon.
With the vaccine being rolled out and us only being months away from mass immunisations, it only makes it even more sadder that some people selfishly put their Christmas festivities above the survival of their vulnerable relatives.

A Long Tradition Of Stupid

When you hear about people spreading theories that 5G masts are spreading Coronovirus and Bill Gates is spearheading a vaccination program that puts microchips into peoples bodies you do wonder if people are getting stupider but unfortunately, stupid isn't a 21st Century thing, we have a long line of stupid people believing stupid things.
In the early 20th Century women riding bicycles was frowned upon because Doctors thought that the vibrations between female legs would cause insatiable sex drives and lead to lesbianism but at least they could catch the rain then, a hundred years earlier it was thought that trains would lead to mass asphyxiation as the human body would not be able to handle speeds of over 20mph.
Novels caused a panic in the 17th Century as it was reasoned that women, having softer brains than the male, would not be able to  distinguish between reality and fiction and would act out the immoral situations they read about in novels and after the invention of the telephone it was considered that possessing both a vagina and a telephone was not a good idea, as women would just use the new invention only for frivolity and not put them to serious use.
As usual, when it comes to wackiness and just plain weirdness, it's the Church we have to turn because they have opposed street lights, arguing that they made a mockery of God very clearly established delineation between night and day, it also tried to ban music that had chords as it was indecent and even grammar didn't escape their beady eye, grammar being the work of the devil and therefore evil.
Forks were considered blasphemous for some unknown reason and Pope Paul IV decided that marble statues were too naked so ordered fig leaves added to cover any exposed statue penises.
It turns out some of those amongst us not only always been this dumb, but their ancestors have also been dumb for a staggeringly long time.

Rapture Definitely Coming 2021

Ever since their guy was nailed to a plank of wood, Christians have been predicting that he is coming back to usher in the end of the World and after many false starts, they are predicting that 2021 is the year that they are definitely, positively, 100% certain it's going to happen.
American evangelist, Harold Lindsey, suggested that the Rapture would occur in the Eighties but after forty years of scratching his head and checking his maths, he has announced that he misread Matthew 24:32-33 and Psalm 90:10 and when he recalculates, it's actually 2021 the Lord returns to smite us, not the eighties.
Easy mistake to make, i am forever getting my Matthew and Psalms confused, it's exactly how i ended up ordering a West African Dwarf Goat off ebay rather than the 10ml of Cherry Bakewell e-Liquid i was after so we can cut him some slack and take his words at face value that 2021 will see the rapture finally arriving.
In order to find out what is going to happen and what we can do about it, i turned to the one and only source that can give us the answers, Blondie, who famously had a song all about it although her advice is: 'And you get in your car and you drive real far, And you drive all night and then you see a light, And it comes right down and lands on the ground, And out comes a man from Mars. And he shoots you dead and he eats your head, And then you're in the man from Mars, You go out at night, eatin' cars'.
So according to Blondie, the sinners will be shot and eaten by a man from Mars before going out to eat your Neighbours Nissan Micra so i'm a bit hesitant about leaving this to 80's New Wave bands but Professor Tom Meyer of the Shasta Bible College & Graduate School in California should know so lets ask him instead.
He says there are 7 stages until we are 'raptured'. First will come apostasy which is a revolt in the Christian Church, then the Antichrist will be revealed and then announce he is above God himself and in the fourth stage he will display himself as the real Messiah.
The fifth event is 'the mystery of iniquity' which includes the presentation of gross injustice, wickedness or sin and then in the sixth and seventh events the true Christ will show up and finally consume the Antichrist and his believers.
No mention of Car eating so i don't know where Debbie Harry got her information from it seems that once the true Christ rips the sky open, you're only going to have seconds to figure out which of the many religion's doing the rounds are right.
A wrong decision now could really cost you but if you choose right don't spoil the moment with smugness because it'll be obvious to everyone just as they are being consumed by whatever God is doing the consuming that you picked the right one, so there's no need to rub it in.
Good luck people.

2020 Predictions Review

Time to review the Psychic predictions for 2020 as made by Judy Hevenly who has a clientele which includes royalty, former presidents, Hollywood movie stars, and heads of state so with a line up like that she should be good, shouldn't she?

So firstly the ones Ms Hevenly didn't quite get right for her predictions for 2020

Neither Michael Bloomberg or Elizabeth Warren gained the Democrat nomination
Donald Trump was not re-elected as President of United States
Scotland nor Northern Ireland held an independence vote in 2020
Sadiq Khan did not win a second term as Mayor of London as the next election is in 2021
Julian Assange was not brought back to the United States to stand trial
US and Iran did not sign a peace treaty
An attempt was not made on President Vladimir Putin’s life
Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture winner, not The Irishman
Queen Elizabeth did not retire
Prince William and Kate did not announce they are expecting their fourth child
The ICC Cricket World Cup was postponed until 2022 so it was not won by India
Miley Cyrus and Cody Simpson did not tie the knot, they actually split up
Pope Benedict XVI did not die
Both San Francisco and Los Angeles had earthquakes last year but neither had one above 6.2  

She did correctly predict that the Oscar for Best Actress would go to Renee Zellweger and the best Actor winner would Joaquin Phoenix and even that Kirk Douglas would die but 3 correct predictions out of 17 for someone with such a reputation with the big guns is a tad disappointing.

2021 Psychic Predictions

Psychics use their 'gifts' to help people find love, happiness and fulfilling lives but they mostly use their 'gifts' to direct people to £2.50 a minute phone lines to find out what will happen in the coming year so it is getting harder and harder to find anyone who will give the information away for free.
My usual go-to psychic websites are now behind a paywall so wanting clarity about your love relationship, how to find your soulmate or life in general depends on your willingness to input your debit card details first but Psychic Nicolas Aujula claims to has received some premonitions of what is in store for 2021 which he is willing to share for free.

1 - Meghan Markle will do a tell-all interview, spilling secrets about the British Royal family
2 - Tom Cruise will suffer a heart related problem
3 - Kim Kardashian will split with Kanye West
4 - A male World leader will be assassinated
5 - A volcanic eruption will lead to major weather changes.
6 - Chancellor Rishi Sunak will resign
7-  A fire rages through New York
8 - A new Harry Potter book will be published
9 - Prince Harry to become a father for the second time
10 - A 'pig flu' will cause mass panic Worldwide.

Slim pickings this year but i will revisit later in the year to see how many of Mr Aujula's predictions have come true.