Olympics So Far

Due to bodily differences, it would be impossible for men and women to compete against each other at the Olympics but the mixed teams events which has been introduced for these Olympics has made some great viewing.
The mixed triathlon relay last night and mixed medley swimming were exciting to watch as the changing leads kept the excitement going especially in the swimming which saw Great Britain's Anna Hopkin swimming the final leg against America's male star swimmer Caeleb Dressel and managing to just hold him at bay thanks to a lead built up by the previous GB swimmers.
The organisers have also introduced a mixed 4x400m relay in the athletics which is also going to be exciting and tactics may well play into it but as much as a success as this has been, can't say i understand their decision to let 335 Russian athletes compete under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee when Russia itself is banned from competing until 2022 due to a doping scandal.
The IOC statement was that the Olympic athletes have been able to show they were not involved in Russia's doping scandal and there has been a few not so subtle comments made by athletes from other nations, mostly after they have been beaten by an ROC athlete which just stinks of sour grapes but they sit 4th in the medal table and they can call themselves what they want, they are Russia to everyone.
Annoyingly, Australia sit 5th, one place above GB despite our overall total being more than the Aussie's, they have won 2 more Gold's than us but i expect us to overhaul them by the end and hopefully the ROC also but it would be great top see Japan and China hold onto the top two places but the Americans usually rack up the medals on the Athletic track and the Asian duo not so much so i can't see it.

Boris Keeping His Pecker Up

Boris Johnson's Wikipedia page list the amount of children he has as 'at least six' but that will now be at least seven because he may not be very good at most things, but he seems to have a knack for producing offspring.
Strangely the Prime Minster is very good at withdrawing although that is usually from difficult BBC interviews or climate debates and not from his partner because even he doesn't know how many children he has, when an LBC presenter asked him how many children he has and whether he plays a full and proper role in all their lives, he refused to answer and started banging on about Brexit instead.
Maybe the 7+ children are all down to Boris's commitment to reducing his carbon footprint by not wearing rubber condoms but still, baby steps and he’s certainly missed a few of those as he has left other people to deal with/cover up/raise his prodigy.
Really, how he treats his partners and children could be an important clue as to how he might handle other things but with the baby due in December, a basic knowledge of the calendar explains the sudden dash to get married in May.

Don't Bother With The Latin

Latin is to be taught at state schools across England in an effort to counter the subject's reputation as one that is 'elitist' and largely at private schools and i am not against the idea per se, but it is called a dead language for a reason and that reason is nobody speaks it, ergo what's the point?
The amount of languages we do use today is multi, e.g. French, German, Spanish et cetera so any of these versus Latin is a no brainer although no doubt the Governments idea from the de facto Prime Minister is Bona Fide, they are keen on these Impromptu decisions, it is their modus operandi after-all!
Not known for their acumen, prima facie it might seem a good idea to them but if i had my way i would veto this decision as an agenda which includes learning a dead language is wrong, the minimum should be teaching students to speak a living language because that would look so much better on their Curriculum vitae.   
I will offer this advice to the Government Pro bono, no need for any Quid pro quo, but the range of languages currently learnt are fine so no need to change the status quo or learn Latin words verbatim because they will just never be used.

P.S. Obviously the caveat is if you are a smart arsed blogger, then learning enough to show off in a post is totally worth it.

Piers Moron At It Again

Looking at Piers Morgan's waistline i would think the only time he does anything energetic is when someone shouts 'The Buffets open', i would guess he would put any athlete to shame with his turn of speed then but being as athletic as a brick hasn't stopped him piling in on athletes, exclusively the female ones.
When tennis player Naomi Osaka said she would not be doing interviews due to her mental health, he called her an 'arrogant spoiled brat' and now he has taken a pop at the Gymnast Simone Biles belittling her explanation of pulling out of the Olympic Gymnastics due to 'mental health issues' and accusing her of quitting because of a poor performance at the Olympics.
Throw in that he famously quit his job at Good Morning Britain after ridiculing Meghan Markle's mental health claims and then flouncing out after Alex Beresford the weatherman said that he was just sore that she had 'cut him off' from their relationship and that is three women whose claims of 'mental health' he has now dismissed.
That all three are also black i don't consider to be an avenue to wander down, Piers Morgan is many things but i wouldn't say he was a racist, a misogynist with a massive problem with successful women obviously, but not a racist.
My personal highlight is when he was sacked by CNN for criticising the loopy American gun laws and there was a petition to send him back to the UK, the British then got their own petition up to keep him in the USA so he has never been the most popular person, Ian Hislop calls him Piers Moron , John Cleese said he was 'a slimy, attention-seeking little prole', and Jeremy Clarkson not only vowed to punch him on sight, but was as good as his word by landing one on him at a Press Awards to cheers from the watching journalists.
As well as quitting his GMB job and being sacked by CNN, he was also sacked from the News of the World and sacked from the Daily Mirror and is currently under police investigation for his role in phone hacking allegations during his time so weighing all that up, not the best track record and he should
have a bit more consideration for athletes removing themselves from situation's they are not comfortable with because that is exactly what he did at GMB when the weatherman disagreed with the tedious little moron.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Olaf of Norway

There is no denying that i was a Viking and our culture was based on seafaring warfare, piracy and sporting natty horned helmets as we pillaged, raped and burned down a local monastery or village or two so there are not many other Saints whose average day was all about getting as drunk as possible, sailing into a foreign land and then setting fire to it's buildings and as the King of Norway i had to set an example so got drunker than most.  
I was nicknamed Olaf the Thick, not because i lacked the brain-cells although the Mead surely destroyed quite a lot of them, but because i had arms and legs like tree trunks, and a belly like one too and when i wasn't pillaging or toasting my hands on a burning Monastery, i was dispensing Christian values.
It was on the way back from ransacking London that i stopped off at Normandy and met Duke Richard II who told me all about Christianity and how it would help to unite Norway and he would love to have Norway on the side of God so i was baptized and set about it by following the Golden
Rule of 'Love Thy Neighbour' although the Viking version meant something a bit different to what it does today and i loved them to death by annihilating the other kings of Norway, raiding Denmark, Iceland and Sweden and burning down any other temple to the ground and building a Christian Church in its place.
I was the ultimate badass, a God-fearing Viking king until a bigger and badasser God fearing King called Cnut the Great promptly handed me my own ass at the Battle of the Helgea but i wasn't completely beaten and came back two years later with an army to show him and his gang exactly who the real King was. Sadly, it wasn't me and he killed with an enormous axe.
Numerous churches in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland are dedicated to me and the Church had no qualms with me bringing Christianity to Scandinavia by brute force because they made me a Saint for it and in my coat of arms i am shown to be holding a Cross in one hand and a Battleaxe in the other showing the oh so Viking way converting people to Christianity or else.

Covid Jabs For The Young

The Government are concerned that whilst the older generations feet never touched the ground in the rush to get their Covid-19 vaccination, the younger generation's feet are moving a lot more sluggishly and my official position is to urge the under 25's to get themselves down to the vaccine center, roll up their sleeves and think of whatever it is you think of when someone is jabbing a needle in your arm.
My problem is that the official stance makes me a massive hypocrite because i completely get why the youngun's are not battering down the doors to get jabbed because if i was under 25, i wouldn't be either.
The young generation have been brilliant in lock-down and i know for a fact that i wouldn't have been if this had happened 30 years ago when i was a firm buttocked teenager, i would have carried on necking my Merrydown Cider and smoking my Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes (are either of those still around?) with my friends and driving around enjoying the quieter roads and whooping it up as i was getting paid to not go to work and good luck mum and dad trying to stop me going out.
That is how the younger generation should be, you feel bulletproof and indestructible and want to go out and experiment and do stupid things and be irresponsible and have fun while you still can.
I would have been nagged into getting the vaccine at the end because that's what parents do but i would have been one of the very last so i understand the reluctance of the younger generation.
That said i am a boring old 52 year old grown up now and i no longer smoke, i wear sensible shoes and drink responsibly (mostly) so to all you kids putting off the Covid-19 jab i officially say make the appointment as soon as possible but unofficially say as soon as that bottle of string cider has been drank and you are out of fags.

5C's Of Vaccine Refuseniks

In every conceivable way the Covid-19 vaccines are saving lives and it too easy to label anyone who continues to refuse one as ignorant, dumb, selfish or a Covidiot and according to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund, that covers up to 20%, or 13 million people, in the UK who say they will not take the invite to roll up their sleeve.
A fear of needles accounts for 10% of those 13 million but what about the other 11.7 million refuseniks?
The Population Health Research Institute at the University of London have been investigating what is influencing these people and have found five psychological and social factors that can influence people's decision-making around vaccines and they are not a politically or anti-scientific cause, they are just making a considered decision not to take the injection.
Labelled the 5C's, they decisions are weighed up on:

Confidence: the person's trust in the vaccines efficacy and safety focusing on any dangerous side effects of the vaccines. 
Complacency: the person considers their chances of catching the disease are less than the average person so the possible risk of the vaccine outweighs the small chance of them catching it
Calculation: the individual's engagement in finding out about the virus, taking an out of sight out of mind approach  
Collective responsibility: the willingness to protect others from infection, through one's own vaccination, a person with a small social circle will see little requirement to protect his peers than someone with a large circle.
Convenience: how easy it is for the person in question to access the vaccine

Obviously we need to be aware of the context of other people's decisions, certain ethnic groups have very little trust in medical authorities or the Government telling them to get vaccinated and the relaxing of restrictions may tempt some to not bother now as we are coming to the end of the pandemic but the good news is that a good proportion of the people who were initially hesitant, do end up taking the vaccine.

Japan's Recycled Olympic Medal's Idea

The Olympics are underway and the medals have started to be handed out but the Gold, Silver and Bronze baubles hanging from around the necks of those who go higher, faster and stronger than the rest are not quite the same as those from over Olympics.
The clever Japanese, one of the technological hot-spots on the planet with companies such as Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Sony, noted that electronics contained the required three metals of bronze, silver and gold so invited it's citizens to donate their old and unused mobiles and other gadgets so they can extract the valuable metals and in a little more than a year, the project received 4.32 million used mobile phones and 34,000 tonnes of small electronic devices from which they have have retrieved 50% of the 30kg of gold required, 43% of the 4,100 kg silver and have already reached the 5,950 kg of the needed Bronze.
The United Nations says that we generate almost 50 million tonnes of e-waste each year but only 20% of that is recycled so making 5,000 medals won't make a big dent in that but it could be a start of something and anything that stops us polluting our planet has to be appreciated.

Applauding Ben & Jerry's Israel Boycott

Like many with a social compass, i have boycotted all things Israeli for decades, going out of my way to check the country of origin sticker and if it says Israel, i put it back on the shelf and a report by the Israeli Manufacturing Association in 2009 claimed that people like me has cost it a 5% drop in the Israeli export economy.
The problem is that the USA backs Israel to the tune of $3.8bn aid each year, therefore giving it tacit approval for its continued abomination against the Palestinians and allowing it to carry on with the status quo which includes stealing it's land and keeping its neighbour well and truly under its military jack-boot while it erases it.
The 5% drop is therefore more than covered by the USA funding but a company has stepped forward this week to say what the Israeli military occupation of Palestine is wrong and Ben & Jerry's have said that it would no longer allow sales in Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
Of course the Israeli's predictably reached straight for the anti-semitism card as they always do to try and shut down the argument whenever the question of their atrocious actions against the Palestinians is aired, a view that waters down the real anti-semitism which is far too prevalent in the World but it's their go-to action so as boringly expected from the Israel leadership.
The company’s stand against illegal Israeli settlements is a small but welcome contribution to what is a ongoing shift in opinion against Israel as its human-rights crimes rack up and in condemning the occupation and settlements, Ben & Jerry highlights the Palestinian cause and adds momentum to a growing global movement which aims to replicate the South African anti-apartheid movement which also had tacit approval from the US and the UK, the Conservative Government at the time branding Nelson Mandela a terrorist for trying to over-turn it.
The Anti-Apartheid movement took 30 years of boycotts and pressure to abolish and all the time America is paying Israel to keep up its genocide then the nation will keep up its atrocious and murderous actions but hopefully Ben & Jerry's move will make it a little bit easier for some other big names to come into the fold and increase the pressure further.

Soul Asylum - Runaway Train

1993 was the Grunge years in music for me but in June of that year there was a different kind of song which got to number 7 in the UK Charts which would appear between the Nirvana and Pearl Jam videos which i always found quite hard to watch, because it's subject matter was wholly depressing.   
The song was Soul Asylum's 'Runaway Train' and the video featured children who had gone missing along with their full name and when they had gone missing and these sections were tailored for different countries so the video for the United States version begins with 'There are over one million youth lost on the streets of America' while the UK version begins with "100,000 youth are lost on the streets of Britain'.  The video was directed by Tony Kaye and showed some difficult scenes of abuse, child prostitution and babies being stolen from pushchairs but what made it so hard to watch was that it was true, these things were really going on and the children whose name was on the screen were real, missing children.
After the video, the lead singer speaks direct to camera saying 'If you've seen one of these kids, or you are one of them, please call this number' with the following screen showing a number one could contact.
The song came back to me today on a Guess The Year radio show and i did wonder if any of the kids in the video had actually been found and after Googling it i found an interview where Kaye said that 26 had been found although he didn't say if that was just in America or Worldwide although 26 is great, it is quite bittersweet.
In the UK Version of the video was Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, who each went missing in 1991. Their remains were found in 2007 at a house in Margate, victims of Peter Tobin who was later convicted of both murders.
It also featured Mark Bartley who was kidnapped in 1992 and was recognised in the video by a man who knew Bartley was staying in the flat below him but by the time the police arrived, Bartley and his kidnapper were gone and he had never been seen since.
What is pleasing is that Kaye and Soul Asylum defied the Record Companies who didn't want the missing kids in the video, instead wanting more shots of the band so they could get better exposure but the band refused, and said the video with the kids stayed.
I'm not sure what Soul Asylum did next, i don't think i ever heard another song by them, but because of them 26 kids returned home or were located and they deserve a massive clap on the back for that.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Christopher

Glory hunting come in many guises, to some it's a matter of changing your allegiance to a football team when they are not winning anymore but for me it was all about the most powerful icon and i started out working for the local King but one day he crossed himself at the mention of Satan and i thought hang on, this Satan guy scares the King so he must be more powerful so i left him and went looking for this Satan dude.   
Turns out he was easy to find as he was hanging out with a gang of marauders and he seemed a decent enough guy and we hung out for a while but one day he went out of way to avoid going near a cross by the side of the road and i thought hang on, this Jesus guy scares the Devil so i left him and inquired from people where to find this Jesus Christ character.
Turns out he is not quite so easy to find but i met a hermit who told me all about the Christian faith and i asked him how i could serve Christ but none of that fasting and non stop praying nonsense, so the hermit suggested that because i was 7ft tall and built like a brick outhouse, i could make Christ very happy by assisting people to cross a dangerous river, where people were perishing in the attempt. The hermit promised that this service would be pleasing to Christ.
Figuring that this was probably the best move in the long run because the King and the Devil turned out to be pussies, i chose to join the forces of good and would sit by the river and wait until someone dawdled along looking in dire need of a bridge and offered to hoist them onto my shoulders and wade across to the other side.
Luckily pastries and pies hadn't been invented yet so there weren't so many chubby people but then along comes this one kid who asked me to take him over and i don't know what he had been eating but he weighed a tonne and it was a real struggle to get over with the lardy kid on my shoulders but we made it and i put him down and said something like 'Wow kid, it felt like i had the World on my shoulders then' and he replied, 'not the world, just the person who made it'.
Turned out the kid was Jesus and i ran to the local town and started blabbing about how i had carried Christ himself which didn't go down too well with the local Christian hating King who told me to shut my yap about Christian things and trying to convert people or he will shut it for me which he did quite well actually by chopping off my head.
Due to my carrying people over the river thing, i got made the Patron Saint of travelers, mariners, ferrymen, boatmen, floods, sailors and surfers which all makes sense but why i am also the patron saint of toothache i'm not really sure but if you got an abscess or a filling falls out give me a shout and if nothing else i will make sure you get to the dentists safely.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Christina

When i died in my early twenties, it was no great surprise, people were dropping dead like flies in the 12th Century so they did the usual thing and laid me out in a coffin and got all the friends and family together to say nice things about me and drop me into a 6ft hole.
They had just got to the 'Thank you for coming today' part when i opened my eyes and sat up and causing
every person in the congregation to make a mess in every pair of pants they owned.
If that wasn't enough coming back from death gave me an amazing sense of smell and i could smell the nasty sin and on all the unwashed people in the room so i levitated up to the rafters to escape it.
When the screaming had stopped i explained that Angels had taken my soul on a tour of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory and i was then given a choice of remaining in Heaven or returning to Earth to perform penance to guide souls to Heaven and away from Hell and Purgatory.
Before you say say 'Earth please' i was back in my body and sitting up in my coffin and getting a noseful of nasty sinners.
My penance was to renounce all comforts of life so i didn't half-ass it with some minor self-flagellation, i dressed in rags, lived without a home and eagerly sought all that could cause me suffering so i took to throwing myself into fires, plunging into frozen rivers and a few times i got dragged around on the water mill but the townsfolk never saw me as doing God's penance, they thought me either possessed or as mad as a box of frogs so they threw me in prison.
After being incarcerated i moderated my approach somewhat and stopped flinging myself into danger and slept in tombs and caves, climbed trees and buildings which not only got me lots of exercise but also probably why i died a second time at 74 and stayed dead this time much to the annoyance of the Dry Cleaners who were hoping for another bumper payday but i stayed in my coffin this time.

All Time Olympic Medal Table 2021

You can't help feel a bit sorry for Japan, they built a 68,000 capacity stadium at a cost of £1bn for the Olympics only to not be able to have any spectators in it so they built a very expensive place for pigeons to sit, which is nice.
Anyway, the 2020 Olympics are here in 2021 and so begins the running, jumping, swimming and throwing things and the Great British Athletes will be hoping to top the 67 medals they loaded into the cargo section of the plane back from Rio in 2016 but that still won't be enough to overhaul the Soviet Union to take second in the Overall Medal Table where we are currently 159 medals behind.
As the Soviet Union ceased to be in 1991 and will no longer be able to add to their tally, unless Putin has other ideas, we are on course to be on the shirt tails of the yanks by the end of the 2024 Olympics in Paris if we get a bit of a shake on, otherwise it will be 2028 in Los Angeles.
Another nation that no longer features in an Atlas printed after 1990 is East Germany who racked up an impressive 409 medals in only 5 Olympic Games and another country that does feature in Atlases but most people would be hard pushed to find is Hungary, who are a surprising 8th in the all time medal table.
Unfortunately, as Japan turned down my request to do the events according to Greenwich Mean Time, most will be going on when i am fast asleep so i won't get to see much of them this time but i am sure that a stadium that cost £1bn will have amazing acoustics's so the athletes swearing will ring out beautifully.

You Can Trust Me, I Have A Certificate

At some times in the 90's i went on a First Aid course and after a day of learning how to deal with nosebleeds, perform the Heimlich maneuver if someone is choking and how to dress burns and scalds, i got handed a certificate which is inside a cardboard box in a cupboard somewhere but as a trained medical person who can tell you to pinch the top of your nose if it is bleeding, i see how it is now.
I have been banging on about the dangers of Boris Johnson's plan of opening up the UK whilst the Pandemic is raging as madness and nobody takes any notice but when the head of the Royal College of Nursing, the World Health Organisation and 150 of the top UK doctors say it everyone starts getting worried.
Anyway, it is nice to see that the top medics of the British Medical Association have now belatedly backed me up by declaring that: 'The government’s current public infection control strategy is not working, it is leading to rocketing case numbers with more illness in the community, more people in hospital, and more people having to isolate. It is time for an urgent rethink rather than staying on the same course'.
As the people at the sharp end they should know but it isn't just almost all the medical people and me with my First Aid certificate in the 'WTF are you doing' corner, we are joined by the scientists who have described the UK's tactics as 'a disaster' and one went as far as to describe it as 'murderous' as aiming for herd immunity would mean pursuing a policy in the knowledge that it would lead to many thousands of deaths.
There you have it then and if you can't take the word of the Medical and Science community and someone who has a bit of paper that certifies me to run your burnt fingers under a cold tap for five minutes, then frankly whose word can you take? 

First Aid Certificate available for viewing on demand if i can find it, nosebleeds should be dealt with by pinching the top of your nose and leaning your head forward, or backwards, it's one of those anyway but probably forward otherwise you will get blood down your blouse and that's not a good look especially if it is a really nice one.

The New Mantra For Arseholes

The UK Government seem to have got fed up with battling Coronavirus and just stated everythings open because 'we just got to live with it' which is great if you don't catch it but the way infections are lifting off, that's going to be easier said then done.
The Over 80's should especially be careful because as Boris Johnson said 'only over-80s are dying' which must come as a great comfort to the grieving families and loved ones of the 'only over-80s' who have died because the Government were so awful at keeping them safe and dismissed them with such a lack of empathy.
Must be hard being a right wing arsehole all the time but many seem to be able to pull it off, you only have to see the comments agreeing with Johnson's 'it’s only the over-80's' comment to get a idea of just how much arseholery there is on that side of the political divide but then we always knew that anyway, the shock would be if they didn't say something so outlandishly selfish and stupid, that's what would make the rest of us sit up.
Another thing the Right Wing are completely clueless about is Climate Change and i do wonder how long it will be until we hear that like Coronavirus, it is something we will just have to live with.
It is sure to become the Rights new mantra, when something is going to effect them negatively, then no point trying to do anything about it, just have to live with it so the rising sea levels, wild fires, extreme weather, floods and desertification, sorry but going to have to just get on with it.
Like when Johnson promised he would do: 'whatever it takes to tackle the pandemic', that promise fell away pretty quickly because it was expensive and hard and now his new idea is to no longer even pretend to keep down infections in England and tackling Climate Change is going to be the same, mostly because the idiots in charge over the last few decades have refused to sort it out and like the delay in Lock-downs, the result is that it is going to be more extreme and harder than it needed to be.
It seems that in a few short years we will have gone from climate change is a hoax and attacking anything scientific to oops, we made a pigs ear of that and tens of millions will die but unfortunately nothing can be done so let's just live with it.
We are, of course, doomed either by Covid-19 or Climate Change but if you are over 80, sorry, the arseholes amongst us don't care which one takes you.

Leadership Boris Style

That almighty screeching sound early this morning was Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak doing a sharp U-Turn over their self isolation after the new Health Minister tested positive for Coronavirus, a day after holding all days meetings with the Chancellor and Prime Minster.
Within three hours of announcing that they will not be self isolating as they were part of a pilot testing scheme, they changed to of course we will self isolate after an outcry from the public asking why they don't have to if we do?
As much as you can feel sorry for a Conservative MP, it fell to poor old Robert Jenrick to do the Sunday morning TV interviews and get it in the neck for defending their plans to continue working only for the pair to make him look a complete fool by announcing that they will isolate after all and not take part in the testing pilot.
Reaction to the initial news was rightly furious with people reporting they were going to delete the NHS Covid-19 app from their phones amidst the special rules for Johnson and Sunak and predicting it would cut through to the public even more directly than the controversy surrounding the lock-down journeys undertaken by Dominic Cummings which eroded so much trust in the Governments Coronavirus policy.
As tomorrow is Day 1 of Boris Johnson's national 'pile the bodies high' experiment, it is ironic that as the
country is heading for chaos with infections rapidly rising and huge swathes of the workforce self isolating, the top three Government Ministers responsible for it are absent.
The three are saying they will now be self-isolating until 26 July although they didn't say which year, so can they make it July 2024 and after the next UK Election please, the less those three clowns are calling the shots until we can replace them the better.

Only The Good Die Young

The Bible says Methuselah lived to 969, Noah to 950 and Adam had 930 candles on his last Birthday Cake but the Bible may be exaggerating slightly because a new study has revealed that the longest a human could potentially live is 150.
The Nature Communications study analysed medical data from hundreds of thousands of volunteers and taking into account the body's loss of physiological resilience, the ability to recover from illness and other wear and tear factors, they concluded that the absolute limit of human lifespan is about 150 years.
Erring on the side of caution that the Bible may not be the best source for these things, the oldest person ever to have lived according to Guinness World Records was a French lady who lived to be 122 years and 164 days old but in the UK the average age is 70 but i am banking on science finding a way to extend that to Methuselah-esque duration by the time i reach 70 although it they do the Government will have us working until 950 so swings and roundabout.
I often apply the Billy Joel rule that only the good die young so i view anyone over 70 with suspicion but as Billy is 72 i'm kinda conflicted over taking his advice but it could explain why some folk could plan on being on the Planet for quite a while yet.

God Save The Queen

I was never a hardcore fan of the band Queen, i liked them fine but i wouldn't say i was a massive fan but it appears there are plenty who are because their Greatest Hits album, released in 1981, is at number 1 again in the UK Albums charts.
To celebrate its 40th year anniversary, the record label released the album on CD and cassette which might have made for some amusement with anyone under 20 on what the hell to do with a cassette, i haven't seen a cassette player for years and to be honest i was glad to see the back of them, the amount of times a favourite cassette was chewed up by the machine and i had to carefully unwrap it from around the cogs of the damned thing and wind it back into the plastic holder with a pencil.
I remember running back home one day in 1995 holding Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette in my hot little hand only for it to be immediately sucked into my cassette player workings and snapping and having a lesson by a friend in how to sellotape the bits of tape back together and NOT BUYING BLOODY CASSETTES! 
Anyway, Don’t Stop Me Now and Killer Queen are probably my favourite Queen songs, i have heard the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody, Another One Bites The Dust and We are The Champions way too much over the last 40 years for them to excite me anymore although i can always appreciate Freddie Mercury's
mighty vocals and Brian May's brilliant guitar work.
The album has spent a total of 952 weeks, a tad over 18 years, on the UK album chart, selling over 6.3 million copies just ahead of ABBA's Greatest Hits which has sold 5.5 million and The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on 5.3 million.
Looking at the Top 20 albums in the UK, i have or have at some point owned only 5 of them which may say something about my musical tastes but as 15 of the 20 were released pre-2000, it may also say something about today's music, or the people buying records, whatever, it's Sunday afternoon and i can't be bothered to work out which it is.  
So i am guessing that the Queen album is being bought today by a new, younger generation who will be like a shooting star leaping through the sky, like a tiger defying the laws of gravity...or they will once they work out who still owns a cassette player.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Theodosia of Constantinople

Life, it is said, can turn on a sixpence and mine certainly did one afternoon when Emperor Leo III sent a bunch of Byzantine soldiers to my Church to remove a huge icon i had hung above the main gate our monastery.
I was born into a wealthy family and i was orphaned young and was taken in by the local nunnery and on becoming a nun myself, i used some of my inheritance to commission many big, elaborate icons for the Church with the biggest and most elaborate being the one of Jesus that i hung over the main gate of the monastery of St. Anastasia i Constantinople.
Not a fan of massive Jesus icons was Emperor Leo III who, when he became emperor, ordered that all religious images be destroyed because worshiping icons was wrong so he sent soldiers to remove it. Anyway, an imperial guardsman arrived with his ladder, and climbed up to take the icon down while me  and a few fellow nuns stood close by.
While one was taking it down and balancing awkwardly on the top rung, i gave his ladder a good shake, the officer came crashing down to earth with a crunch of breaking bones and died from his injuries.
The guard's superior was nearby and came running over to arrest me and i explained that i really didn't want them to remove my icon and just in case that didn't get the point across, us picking up rocks and doing what any peace loving bunch of nuns would do and bashing his brains in definitley did.
The nuns and i were arrested and brought to the Emperor who ordered the others be beheaded but he saved a more bizarre and gruesome fate for me by giving me a hundred lashes each day for a week and then on the eighth day decided to hammer a ram's horn through my throat.
My tomb is said to be the site of numerous healing's of the sick who turn up in their droves to be healed but unless you turn up with a goat horn jammed in your neck i'm not much help.

Brainwashing The Young With Religion

I am not much of a religionist, taking the view that if you don't try and ram your God down my throat i won't ram my Atheism down yours but it seems i can't go down town now without someone trying to give me leaflet inviting me to some religious service or other but recently there has been one of these new happy clappy Churches in the shopping center singing about God and Jesus and those sort of things.
I usually ignore them and politely refuse their leaflets unless they try and engage me in why i'm a sinner or how Jesus somehow saved them and he can save me also and then i engage and back and question why they believe in something which they have no proof for.
Today's band was a young man and woman singing about Jesus who had beside them a small baby in a buggy and i thought that kid has no chance, religion is going to rammed into him from the start.
At an early age the human brain is shaped and moulded by the parents and it is the parents who teach them that playing with fire is dangerous, not to put things in their mouths, don't talk to strangers, there is a God who made the Universe and you will go to hell if you are bad and they will go to Church, Mosque or Synagogue where that message is constantly reinforced and the child is conditioned to refuse to believe anything other than that and they grow up with a firm belief that is how things are.
They will pray for something, an A in geography or to win the 100m Sports Day race and it happens, hooray, God answered the prayers but we know he never, it wasn't someone up above changing things just so you get what you prayed for but they won't think about it intellectually, it was God because they prayed for it as they were told from the beginning.
Religion at the basic level doesn't affect me, i find it rude and annoying when they come up to me and try to persuade me that they are right and why i should believe them but i just say every religion there has ever been, and there has been thousands who have all said 100%, absolutely, guaranteed no doubt about it, unquestionably their God is the one, so why should i believe you with your leaflet over any of the other ones who are as certain about it as you are?
What does affect me is when religion becomes a fixture at a higher, more powerful level with real control over other people, it affects me then when one religion decides their God is the right one and the rest are evil and should go to hell and they are going to help their God send them to hell by blowing them up, shooting or stabbing them or throwing them off tall buildings and it wasn't that long ago that Christians were doing all the above and invading nations to instill their religion on them. I have yet to hear of a war waged by one nation to instill atheism on another one.  
Hitler had a belt with 'God Is With Us' on the buckle and said by killing Jews he was 'doing God's work' and i am not saying that kid in the buggy today will end up trying to do God's work by killing infidels, but there is a good chance that they will grow up with a less than healthy attitude towards some other members of society such as Homosexuals or women undergoing abortions.
They may not, they may grow up, think about it, look at the evidence for themselves and decide the whole idea of religion and a God creating the Universe is nonsense but they are fighting against the tide from a very young age so it is unlikely they will ever escape their upbringing, not impossible, but it doesn't happen that often.
Being an Atheist doesn't mean i wouldn't take note if someone did come up to me with irrefutable proof of God then i would say brilliant, all those other religions over the last 4,000 years WERE wrong and this is the biggest breakthrough in human history but nobody has yet, all they have to try and persuade me is the belief passed down from their parents who got it from their parents and backwards through the generations.
The test is, if nobody ever mentioned religion, atheism or anything to do with heaven or hell to a child, would they reach that conclusion themselves without the details and constant reinforcement of their elders? Highly unlikely which shows that religion is a man made construct so believe what you want and even sing about it in shopping centers but remember that some of us set the bar a little higher for the burden of proof than you obviously do for our beliefs.

Financial Advice For Those Who Don't Get Finances

As my pension plan includes either winning the lottery in the next few decades or surviving on food i find behind the fridge i am not one to ask for financial advice but a report from Censuswide there are an amazing number of people who said they didn't understand money and lack basic financial skills and knowledge.
When i was a lecturer i was forever having to explain the tax system to the teenagers who were finding their jobs and not understanding their tax codes or what National Insurance was for but i do have some free advice which is rule number 1, don't pay for advice when you can get it for free.
HMRC has 20,000 advisors who you can telephone and they will make amendments to your tax code, explain National Insurance, work out and send you a tax refund and help you complete your Tax Return so you don't need to pay hundreds of pounds to an Agent each year when you can get it done for free.  
Rule 2 is the difference between what you want and what you need. Advertisers will send images into your eyeballs making you believe that the new item they are trying to hok you is a must have thing, it isn't, if you didn't know you needed it until you were told you did on TV then it isn't that important.
Rule 3 is only spend what you have. Credit is the work of the devil, you should only spend what you have, if you haven't got it then save for it, buying it now and paying for it later is a ruse which will see you paying twice as much for it and sometimes it will be in landfill and long forgotten by the time you have finished paying for it.
Rule 4 is never, ever, ever, ever take out a payday loan, up to 4000 % interest will see you taking out another loan to repay that last loan and then another loan to pay off the previous loan and each payday a good portion will be taken to repay the loan for the money you borrowed for that time you needed money to stretch to that first payday. If you really are that desperate, ask your parents, most won't add an absurd percentage to it and then take you court if you default.
Rule 5 is if it sounds too good to be true, you can guarantee it is. Unfortunately there are unconscionable people around who won't think twice about emptying your bank account. That email may look official but if it is asking for bank details or personal information, you are one message sent away from having your identity stolen or looking at a £0.00 balance at your Halifax Account.
Rule 6 is the World turns, birthdays come and go and at some point you will be 67 and receiving the state pension which in the UK is notoriously stingy £179.60 per week, £9,339 a year if you have paid the full amount of National Insurance for 35 years, less if you haven't. The alternative is as you close in on reaching the pensionable age, you are reliant on a lottery win or surviving on food you find behind the fridge to sustain you in your dotage.

High Fives In Moscow When Trump Elected

Despite the initial fears, it was nice that Donald J Trump's time as President ended in a smooth transition and America was made Great again, - just kidding, it all ended in a riot, a nation split and large swathes of the country full of disease so pretty much as expected really or as Russia expected when they plotted to put Trump in charge, or as they called him, the mentally unstable, impulsive and unbalanced one.
Papers leaked from Russia show that Putin was urging a plan to interfere in the race for the White House with the goal of destabilising America and causing social upheaval so it must be all high fives and butt slaps in the Kremlin because that was well and truly mission accomplished.
Following a not so secret meeting seeing as they actually had official photos taken before, during and after it, Putin ordered the head of his foreign policy directorate, Alexander Manzhosin, to arrange a multi agency strategy that would weaken and undermine Hillary Clinton and positively effect Trump and once the Trump victory was assured, they reminded him of the 'Kompromat', or compromising material, they had on him specifically that infamous video of the prostitute party he held in the Moscow hotel which ended with the Hotel cleaners ordering the industrial strength washing powder for the urine soaked bed sheets.
With the threat of piss party video's appearing on YouTube overshadowing his Presidency, Trump did seem to have a strange aversion to pointing his chubby little fingers at Russia for anything to the point of siding with the Kremlin over his own government agencies after a joint appearance with Vladimir Putin in which he accepted the Russian leader’s denial of election meddling.
America may have a grown up in charge now but the upheaval from the Trump years will reverberate for years to come especially as much to Russia's joy he is still around spitting out his deranged poison and stirring up his less than savvy supporters with continued nonsense but the UK Politicians should take note that Putin managed to maneuver a useful idiot to the top job in America who was 'impulsive, mentally unstable and an unbalanced individual' and we have Boris 'watermelon smiles' Johnson in charge so they should be checking if the Russians interfered here to bring that idiot to Downing Street and have any videos of Boris standing amongst some suspiciously wet sheets in a Moscow hotel.

Highest Death Toll In Europe For A Reason

Unless there is a very late change of plans, we are all being thrown to the Wolves on Monday which is Day 1 of the Governments plan of 'Having to live with Coronavirus'.
If they have a figure of when things are becoming to dangerous to live with it anymore, that figure isn't 50,000 new infections a day because yesterday 51,870 were recorded along with 49 deaths and as that figure is with restrictions in place, and the deaths were from new infections at least 4 weeks ago, to most people opening up when infections are rising at such an alarming rate is pure madness but then this is the Government of Boris Johnson and pure madness is it's thing, we don't have the highest death rate in Europe by having a sensible Government.
Yesterdays figure is only 17,000 below the highest ever record which came in January when it took a tough lock-down to prevent hospitals buckling and we currently have 3,964 patients in hospital but that figure lags around two weeks after the first infection so that will rise steeply as we head into August.  
Despite denials that the initial reaction was to just let the virus rip so we can reach herd immunity at some point, letting the virus spread now will still put pressure on hospitals, leave people with long Covid and be hugely disruptive as large numbers of people need to isolate and to that end, of the 26.5 million in England and Wales who downloaded the app, 3 million have now deleted it again as it is the app which would inform them that they have to self-isolate as they have been in contact with someone who now has Covid-19.
Dr Jenny Harries, the head of the new UK Health Security Agency, told MPs she was 'aware that people are choosing not to use the app' when asked about concerns people have been deleting it to avoid being 'pinged' and there is news of employers telling their staff to delete or turn off the app to avoid missing work as cases rise and more people are being forced to isolate, with businesses warning of staffing shortages.  
England's chief medical officer, Chris Witty, today warned cases and hospital admissions could hit 'scary numbers' and hopefully the Government are watching the numbers rise and have a point where they call a halt and slam on the brakes again and they will have to at some point because they may be fed up with the disruption and the economic hit but the virus will be beside itself in glee at all the new UK folk it can now infect and probably thanking its lucky stars that the UK Government is either so awfully incompetent or so at ease with damaging it's own folks health.

Special Guest Blogger: Vladimir of Kiev

There are not many Saints with 800 Wives, so many children that everyone lost count and a Viking Army and those who spent much of their life gambling, brawling and wenching are very thin on the ground but then there are not many men like me.
Before becoming a saint, i enjoyed a very successful career as a marauding pagan but decided one day i wanted to be the Grand Prince of Kiev, so i amassed an army of Vikings and stormed the city and deposed the jerk who currently held the title who just happened to be my brother.
After storming across Europe with hordes of Vikings to kill my own brother, i was now a Royal and ruler of Kiev so i decided it was time to settle down with a Royal wife so i sent some people to ask for the daughter of a nearby royal.
Sadly, the would-be bride declined the offer so being the reasonable person that i was, i killed her father and forced her to marry me anyway but the Royal life and one wife failed to satisfy my itch so i expanded my territory, making human sacrifices to the Pagan Gods along the way and increasing my inventory of boobies by taking 800 concubines and wives so at this point you are probably wondering how did this bloke ever become a saint?
Well, the neighboring countries who i hadn't slaughtered kept badgering me about abandoning my pagan ways and adopting one of the more respectable religions and after deciding that Islam's stance on booze wasn't to my liking and i was quite attached to my foreskin, i rejected Judaism also but on seeing a couple of men tucking into a pork leg and walking along with their foreskins obviously still firmly attached, i settled on Christianity.
I was baptized and if i was going to get my hair wet i was also going to make sure everyone was going to also so i ordered everyone else in Kiev to be baptized as Christians also which went down so well with the Christians that they made me a saint, yep, the bar was really set that low back then.
Obviously i couldn't take part in human sacrifices anymore but after checking, i went home to celebrate with as many of the 1,600 boobies i had at my disposal and becoming known as less as the guy who would hack you into tiny pieces and more Vladimir the Great and lived peacefully with all my wives before dying of old age at the ripe old age of 57.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Camillus de Lellis

My life didn't start out all that saintly. I was born in 16th-century Naples and followed in my father's footsteps and went into soldiering and joined the Venetian army just as we began fighting against the Turks where in one battle, i got a nasty leg wound but after a few more scraps the regiment was disbanded and i traded in my sword for a horse and cart but my real love was gambling but as much as i loved it, it didn't love me back because i lost everything, including my horse, and was forced to work as a labourer at the local friary.
The guardian of the friary would often talk to me about God and things on my tea break and he offered me the chance to make it up to the big guy upstairs by doing his work down here.
I entered the Novitiate of the Capuchin friars although my leg wound continued to bother me and refused to heal but i decided that i could help the soldiers wounded on the battlefield so created a group of health care workers who would assist soldiers during conflict and we carried a large red cross to show the soldiers not to get all stabby on us as we were there to help.
It obviously worked because the big Red Cross became a thing as was the Friars burying people immediately after they died as the Bubonic Plague was killing millions but the newly buried were not always dead so i ordered that the Brothers of our Order wait fifteen minutes at a safe distance past the moment when the patient seemed to have drawn their last breath, in order to avoid burying them alive.
The problem with spending time around the sick is that you get sick yourself and as well as that damned unhealing sore on my leg, i suffered a rupture, weeping sores on my body, violent colic and a loss of appetite which compared to the other things, not being very peckish could have been worse.
At the age of 65, after a long life of caregiving, conflict, and not feeling hungry, i went and died despite all the prayers because popping a leach in your trousers and praying is not as effective as proper medicine and i was laid to rest in peace or rather in peace until someone decided to rip my Christ-loving heart out of my dead chest to send it on a tour around the globe for religious folk to gawp at rather than letting my mortal remains just turn to dust in a tasteful grave somewhere which truth told, would be my first choice but the Catholic Church does like a Saintly body part to hoick about.

Special Guest Blogger: St. Margaret of Antioch

My father was a Pagan Priest and my mother died not long after giving birth to me so i was sent away to be raised by my nurse who was a devoutly Christian woman who raised me to consecrate my virginity to God because God does love a virgin and i had a happy childhood living in the country keeping sheep with my foster mother until just after my 15th Birthday when Olybrius, the chubby Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, stopped by our village and i caught his eye and he asked me to marry him and i thought that's not too bad, living in a Palace with servants and everything but he demanded that i renounce my Christianity first.
When i said 'Whoa there chubster, no way am i doing that' he had me arrested, tortured and then thrown into the dungeon and then things took a bizarre turn for the worse when Satan appeared before me in my cell and for some reason he took the form of a massive dragon and the Satan/Dragon thing swallowed me whole.
What happened next was that the cross that i was wearing irritated the stomach of the Satan beast, obviously him being Beelzebub and all, and he began scratching furiously at his stomach and i scratched from the inside and between us i managed to cut myself out.
The next day, the Romans tried to execute me by drowning me and when that never worked they tried lighting me on fire, which would have seemed a bit like overkill if it had actually worked but it turns out that bathing in the blood of devil dragons makes you immune to most ordinary causes of death, because neither the drowning nor the flames harmed me.
Not deterred by my unique levels of unkillability, the Romans eventually resorted to chopping my head off which was much more effective and so began my career of the Patron Saint of expectant mothers but i did put in an appearance a little later as one of the voices who spoke to Joan of Arc although as she ended up crispy fried, maybe what i should have said was don't give up the day job love.

Racism Starting At The Top

When i was growing up in the 70's, racism was everywhere including on the TV and usually disguised as comedy and then in the 80s and 90s there was a change and the jokes became taboo and the comedians who's act was based on making fun of anyone who wasn't white was shunned and racism seemed to be on the retreat although it never actually went away.
The racists were in the minority and society moved on but it seems to be making a comeback with black footballers being targeted for vile abuse online by cowards hidden by the anonymity social media affords them.
In America, the racists were emboldened by having a racist in charge and here in the UK the same has happened with Boris Johnson and his awful Government members.
It was Johnson who at first refused to condemn the booing of the same players taking the knee in support of anti-racism and members of his Government quickly followed and the racists felt they had a kindred spirit running the country and let loose with the monkey images and abuse.
The problem is therefore at the very top with a man who said Muslim women look like letterboxes, labeled black Africans piccaninnies with watermelon smiles and said the problem with Africa is that 'we are not in charge any more' and called Islamophobia 'a natural reaction'.
He has also gone with homophobia and sexist quotes and former Conservative Party chair, Baroness Warsi, has come out today and said the racist abuse of players 'proved that taking the knee was an important and essential part of this tournament' and in a dig at her previous boss, said 'Those that failed to condemn the booing are feeding a culture where racism thrives and shames our nation'.
The media companies need to do something, it cannot go on.

Virgin Astronauts, Or Are They?

After 17 years of planning and half a billion pounds spent, at 1pm today Richard Branson is launching his Virgin Galactic into Space beating his rival Jeff Bozo's who plans to launch his own spacecraft Blue Origin next week and the stats on the Virgin Galactic website are impressive.  
Galactic’s VSS Unity spacecraft will hit speeds of about Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound and will rise to about 300,000 feet, or 57 miles and future space tourism flights will cost around £200,00 a seat and will make around 36, 90 minute flights a year.
As Space tourism is about to literally take off, the interesting part is the 57 miles above the Earth the Virgin flight will reach which is below the Kármán line, which is what scientists use to define the start of outer space and that line is 62 miles up.
Jeff Bezzo's Blue Origin plans to take its passengers past the Kármán  line on its flights so we may need to look up the definition of Astronaut because if they are not actually going into 'Outer Space', are Branson's passengers just paying an obscene amount to fly really, really high and are not actually 'Astronauts'?
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) Sporting Code for astronautics recognises only humans who that exceed the Kármán line, at an altitude of 62 miles where 'the atmosphere becomes so thin that centrifugal force, rather than aerodynamic force, carries a significant portion of the weight
of the flight object' so according to them its a non.
In the United States though the bar is literally set a little lower because they hand out astronaut wings to   
anyone who travel above an altitude of 50 miles so in the US of A, the Virgin passengers will come back to Earth as Astronauts.
According to the USA there have been 558 people who have reached space, to the rest of the World there has been 552 people but as the Virgin launch is in New Mexico, and therefore under American Astronaut rules, they can legitimately call themselves Astronauts but they had better not come here and give it the biggie by calling themselves it because you may be Spacemen over there but over here you will just be people who paid £200,000 for a glorified plane trip. 

Remembering The Day Football Came Home

'Great Grandma Lucy' asked the grandchildren in 2054, 'our teacher has asked us to ask you if you remember when England became a Great nation again, tell us please' .

'Ok little ones, it was during the plague of the 20's' I shall start. 'England was teetering on a knife-edge of survival, and then 11 men and 5 substitutes in white led by a fearless soon to be Prime Minister Gareth Southgate, strode forward to crush Croatia, scatter the Scots, crunch the Czech Republic, grind the Germans, demolish Denmark and all that stood between us and victory was the Italians'.

The children will look at me through the Tesco digital portal, their eyes wide with anticipation for the story.
 
'It was a balmy, July evening in London, 60,000 brave souls defied the virus and crowded into Wembley, hope in their heart and a flag painted onto their faces, such a wondrous sight to behold...'

'Yes, Great Grandmama..go on' the infant holograms will trill, gazing into my ancient, wizened face from the Space Station orbiting the dusty and barren Planet in a desperate attempt to ensure their survival.

'Everyone in England put down their mobile phones, turned off Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for 90 long, long minutes'.

'What are these things Facebook, Instagram and Twitter'? they will ask, confusion on their innocent faces looking up at me in awe.

'Oh never mind' i will sigh, 'Oh but it was a long, dark 90 minutes, we tried to hold a conversation but the ancient art had all been lost and the silence only broken temporarily with the occasional cry of 'just clear the feckin' thing' and the questioning of the managers choice of playing a flat back four over a five at the back with wingback's but otherwise there was silence across the land until the 81st minute'.

'What happened then, Great Grandmama?' they ask in hushed tones.

'There was a … an error' I say. 'In … in the Italian back four. One of them, Giorgio Chiellini i think it was, had a malfunction and forgot to fall over clutching his leg when an Englishman came within 50cm of him, instead he stayed on his feet and Sir Harry Kane ran past him and scored'.

'The entire country held it's breath, 50 million English stopped breathing as one for the VAR check, the referee stood with his finger in his ear, silence and then..and then...'

'Football came home Great Grandma?'

'It did..it came home to it's Mummy and Daddy and we laughed, and cried and hugged each other'.

'Hooray' the little ones will cheer.

'From that day Three Lions on a Shirt became the National Anthem. Obviously, it was also the start of the terrible Covid surge of 2021 which wiped out half the nation but it was a great time, people went to the Respiratory Unit with an awful cough in their throats but a song in their heart, and a smile on their faces'.

'Thank you, Great Grandmama Lucy' they will say. 'That was a very good story. Go to sleep now, you look tired'.

'I shall', i’ll say, drawing my rug across my knees. 'I shall. Goodnight darlings, sleep tight'.

England Footballers With A Social Conscience

It hasn't been easy trying to defend footballers in recent times and to be fair, i never bother trying but the current England Team deserve a massive round of applause as we seem to have bunch of socially conscious players who have not only been making a stand against racism but making a stand for the NHS and taking on the Government over free school and led by a manager who said in an open letter to fans that ' It’s the players duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate'.
His letter was a reaction to Boris Johnson refusing to condemn those booing and jeering the gesture and Home Secretary Priti Patel branded the act of footballers taking the knee as 'gesture politics', Jacob Rees Mogg calling the taking of the knee 'problematic' and MP Lee Anderson saying he would be boycotting the tournament over the gesture.
Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford has successfully lobbied the government into two U-turns over its free school meals policy, Raheem Sterling of Manchester City has supported the Black Lives Matter movement and launched a foundation to help disadvantaged young people
while Liverpool's Jordan Henderson and Manchester United's Harry Maguire masterminded a charitable fund raising money from footballers to support NHS staff and patients during the Coronavirus pandemic.
I am sure that they are plenty of the likes of Ashley Cole, John Terry, Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs still plying their trade in front of the TV Camera's but the current England squad, and Manager, are hopefully an example for the next generation of footballers, fans and politicians.

Explaining Afghan War To The Families Of The Dead

From the start the Afghan War was wrong, despite an attempt by some to rewrite it since, the War was not about terrorist training camps, lack of human rights, female oppression or the blooming poppy fields which all became a belated justification afterwards, it was to punish the Taliban for not 'coughing up Bin Laden' as George W Bush put it at the time.
If they had handed him over at the time than America would probably have stepped back and left the Taliban in Government and we wouldn't be talking about the withdrawal of US and Nato troops nearly 20 years later.
What we can say with certainty is that the foreign troops were the only thing stopping the Taliban from taking back full control, they hold large swathes of the country already even with the troops there so we can be assured that they will soon shortly be picking up from where they left off in 2001.
So how to explain that to the families of the 111,000 dead Afghans, the families of the 460 dead British and 2,400 American soldiers not returning to their families sent to fight in an unwinnable war which will end in exactly the same position that it started?
It would be an insult to even try and would be worth remembering the next time an American President or British Prime Minister stands before a TV Camera and tries to explain why war is the only solution because since time immemorial, war has killed hundreds of millions and war is the ultimate failure of just plain talking to each other, it is never the only solution because there should always be more talking. 

Hot Canadians

I don't consider Canada to be a particularly hot country being that far North but it is bracing itself for extreme heat, approaching the temperatures seen at the end of last month when it reached 49.6C, breaking the country's highest recorded temperature and only 4.8C shy of the highest ever temperature recorded on Earth.
That is currently 54.4C and was recorded in August 2020 but was equaled yesterday in California's Death Valley although the depth and shape of Death Valley lends itself to higher than normal temperatures.
I was in Berkshire this week, inland and miles away from the cooling coastal breeze and the temperature hit an uncomfortable 28C but the highest temperature that i have ever faced was 40C in Southern Italy and i wilted instantly so what 49C feels like i wouldn't want to experience so sweaty Canadians have my sympathy but as the climate changes, higher temperatures are going to become a thing we need to adjust to.
Experts say that climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of heatwaves although linking any single event to global warming is complicated, you need to look at the trends rather than a one off event, but as climate change is taking what is already there and ramping it up, climate researchers are saying the heat that scorched western Canada and the US at the end of June was 'virtually impossible without climate change'.
We are just reaping what we have been sowing for the last 200 years although that will be very little comfort to Canadians who the only advice i can give is put the pillow case in the fridge 30 mins before you go to bed, that and drink lots of water.

A Prediction

Despite saying that the country is safe to reopen and once open following the Covid-19 outbreak, there is no going back and we will just have to live with it now, i am going to make a prediction.   
As i am say here at 18:00 on 10 July 2021, my app tells me that at present in Britain, we have 32,367 new daily cases, 34 deaths and 2,731 people in hospital and i boldly state that despite the vaccine success, by October 1st Britain will be back in lock-down again.
Experts are concerned that new cases will rise massively to somewhere between 100,000-200,000 per day and with a death rate from the new Delta variant of around 1%, 1,000 to 2,000 a day will be losing their lives.
Why such a gloomy prediction you may be wondering and i say just look at the UK Governments track record so far during the pandemic, and with the exception of the early vaccine procurement, they have got everything wrong at almost every step.   
They got the lock-downs wrong as well as the border controls, the eat out to help out, Christmas, test and trace, PPE, discharging hospital patients to care homes and face coverings and almost every medical expert from the World Health Organisation to The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which advise the Government are saying the decision is wrong.
I hope i am wrong and that the current trend which is pointing towards another surge with all the precautions still in place is an anomaly but if it comes down to the decision of trained medical professionals or the guy who proudly stated that he was shaking hands with Covid patients before contracting Covid himself, i'm with the medical team.   
I'm sure the Government will be pouring over the daily figures and if they rise too high, they will drag us back into lock-down and that is where i expect us to be by the start of October, back to square one but with a population reduced by tens of thousands and the NHS overwhelmed going into the busy Autumnal and Winter months.
I sincerely hope i'm wrong and i will be happy to sit in this same seat on October 1st and hold my hands up and admit that i was hoplessly and woefully wrong and the UK Government got it absolutely right.

Johnson Saying Let It Rip

We all knew that at some point the Government would have to pull the plug and say enough, we will just have to live with Coronavirus and that day is going to be July 19 but how it was announced does not fill me with confidence.
With daily new cases standing at 28,000 cases, Boris Johnson said he expects it be be closer to 50,000 when July 19 rolls around and England becomes the most unrestricted society in Europe and today the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid doubled figure that to a possible 100,000 a day over the summer.
He also said the current 300 hospitalizations a day will increase and it remained possible that new variants of Covid could emerge, potentially with resistance to current vaccines.
The World Health Organisation have called the rush to lift coronavirus restrictions as ' very premature we could pay a price for' and encouraged a more cautious approach and scienbti9sts at the Imperial College London say that the 100,000 figure could surge to 200,000 a day if England abolishes most of the remaining coronavirus restrictions.
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which advises the government, agreed that cases could hit 150,000-200,000 a day and called the high infection and some people getting very ill a politcal price to be paid for the ending of restrictions.
Modelling shows that at the peak of the second wave 50,000 cases would translate into approximately 500 deaths, but that’s going to be much lower this time, more like 50 for every 50,000 infections so with a rate of 150,000 new daily cases, that's 150 daily deaths, 1050 a week, and untold tens of thousands who are risking the debilitating long Covid.
I agree that we are going to have to find a way of living with the virus but throwing off all protections at the same time appears to be reckless and a return to the original Government plan of just letting it rip, a Government which has got pretty much everything wrong, pretty much all the way through.
Johnson may deny ever saying he would prefer letting the bodies pile high, but he certainly seems to be saying it now.

Don't Launch Any Sun Missions Today

At 11.27pm UK time tonight, due to it's elliptical orbit, the Earth will be at its aphelion which means it will be as far away from the Sun as it is going to get, 94.5 million miles or 152.1 million km.
The closest (perihelion) was in January and since then the Planet has shifted away by 3 million miles or 4,800,000 km from the Sun than when at its closest so you would think that as our little ball of rock is 3 million miles further out, it would be cooler but apparently it doesn't quite work like that.
As the Earth is on average 93 million miles away from the Sun, the 3 million miles is too small a distance to make a difference to the amount of the Sun's energy we receive, ranging from a 1.5% rise at its closest to a 1.5% dip when it is farthest away.  
A secondary consideration is that the Earth is predominantly water and water has a higher heat capacity than land so the water to land ration offsets the meager solar increase or decrease by the shifting Earth.
Obviously being the furthest point away it is the very worst day of the year to launch a mission to the Sun and not much comfort for the nations currently frying under a heatwave but the movement between Earth and Sun is all part of the elegant dance of Space objects and who doesn't love that.

Changing Capitalism

Around 250 years ago, Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, in which he described the birth of Capitalism which would lead to the accumulation of wealth beyond anything we can imagine and undoubtedly it has reshaped the world and lifted people out of poverty over the last two centuries, increased standards of living and resulted in inventions that have radically improved our lives but it has come at a cost.
Making a profit has become the over-riding philosophy to the detriment of  society and inequality and probably the greatest threat we face, the environmental damage and devastating climate change.
With those with the most to gain from Capitalism making the decisions, Capitalism will not be replaced anytime soon but with a significant gap between the wealth of the richest and poorest people continuing to grow and nature fighting back with devastating droughts and sea levels rises, it may have to be rethought.
The 2007-2008 financial crisis exacerbated the capitalism problem, hitting the poorest hardest and leading to resentment of the politicians which led to the likes of Populists such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Belsonaro rising to power and the polarisation of left and right wing political viewpoints.
A change may be coming, in a statement released by over 180 corporate CEOs including Wal-Mart, Apple, JP Morgan Chase, Pepsi and Yahoo acknowledged that they must redefine the role of business in relation to society and the environment, doing more than deliver profits to their shareholders and contributing to the improvement of the human, natural and society rather than the sole focus on financial capital.
If Capitalism is to survive, and Karl Marx described it as a necessary step towards Socialism as the workers would rise up and overthrow their corrupt leaders and install a fairer system which would distribute fairly the share of the profits, the future of Capitalism and the Capitalists driving it, depend on it changing into something a bit more fairer and less devastating to the planet.

Worrying Aspects Of Cosby Release

You would think that the Bill Cosby case was simple enough, he drugged women and then sexually assaulted them so lock him up and let him rot so i am a bit perplexed about the 'technicality' which has seen him released back into society.
From what i can understand, it stems from 2005 when Police were investigating a claim of sexual assault against Crosby and agreed that they wouldn't prosecute him if he confessed to the assault, which he did and paid the victim $3.4 million in some sort of 'sorry about the drugging and raping you' gesture.
Following the case, over 60 other women came forward speaking about the sexual abuse they allegedly endured at the hands of the actor and Cosby was arrested, charged and found guilty on counts of drugging, sexual misconduct, rape, child sexual abuse, and battery and was handed an ten year prison sentence.
Two years later, Cosby is free as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided that evidence from the 2005 case was used in his conviction and as he had confessed free from the danger of being prosecuted, there had been a 'violation of Cosby’s due process rights' and released.
In a further blow to all the women he drugged and raped, they cannot simply retry the case without the 2005 evidence because the Court said that 'any future prosecution on these particular charges must be barred' as 'it is important that the constitutional rights of the people are vindicated'.
Why the Police gave a serial sexual offender a 'get out of Jail free' back in 2005 with an agreement if he admits to it he won't get prison time is worrying enough but now a dangerous predator is back in society 'on a technicality' but most concerning is the negative impact it will have on those who have been sexually abused and those who will be in the future who must look at this and wonder if it will be worth reporting it as the police and courts won't support them.

Lend Us A Tenner Jeff

Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos is stepping down as the CEO to become executive chairman and his wealth is put around $198 billion which according to the Observer Newspaper, makes him wealthier than 92% of the world's countries.
It breaks that down to Jeff Bezos making around $321 million per day, $149,353 a minute or $3,715 per second which is obscene by any standards but although it makes a great headline, i find that a bit misleading because he hasn't actually got that amount sitting in his bank account, his wealth is measured in stocks, and stocks are a kind of made-up value.
If i had a company which had a million shares with a value of £1, my company shares are worth £1 million in total, so my company is valued at £1 million.
If i sold you 100 shares at £2 each, the new stock price is £2 and my million shares are now worth £2 million so my company is worth £2 million but it doesn't actually have £1 million more in wealth than it did yesterday.
If my company does really well and more people want to buy shares then i could sell them for £10 a share and suddenly my company is worth £10 million but i couldn't pop off and buy a speedboat just yet because the £10 million is not real money at all and i am not personally any richer.
The only way i would personally make out of it would be if i sold some of my own shares, if i kept 10,000 from the original million and sold them at the £10 a share price, that would raise £100,000 from which approximately 45% would be lost to taxes so i'm left with about £55,000 which is a significant amount less than the £10 million my wealth was measured at originally.
That means that when we hear about Bezo's $198 billion, Elon Musk's $168 billion or Bill Gates $127 billion, it's money that doesn't actually exist sat in their bank accounts as we imagine it.

Special Guest Blogger: Donald Rumsfeld

There are things we know we know and there are some things we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns and one of those was where Saddam put his damned Weapons of Mass Destruction because we know he had them, i was one of the people who sold him shed loads of the stuff.
I probably came onto most peoples radars during my second term as Secretary of Defense after the 9/11 attacks but my first term was under Gerald Ford where i became the youngest person to serve in that role and then under George W Bush when i was the second oldest.
That photograph of me shaking hands with Saddam in the 1980's to seal the deal of the arms, money, satellite intelligence and chemical & bio-weapon precursors always bothered me, not that they were used on the Iranians, but that it should have given us the fig leaf to invade Iraq to destroy the WMD's but we were unaware that he had actually beaten us to it and rather ungraciously got rid of them years before.
Not that him not actually having the WMD's stopped me, i just went on claiming Iraq had Chemical, Nuclear and Biological weapons and threw in that he was pals with Bin Laden's gang anyway and luckily we had George W Bush calling the shots, a man who couldn't chew gum and walk because he was too stupid to open the gum wrapper in the first place.
Why we invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 was never really answered which is just as well really because we never really had one except the billions of tonnes of oil sat under Iraq but we couldn't admit it, so just made shit up instead and a million dead Iraqi's later we had it under our control, and our former pal Saddam was swinging from the end of a rope so go us. Iraq is a basket case full of terrorists but America is 5,000 miles away, so what did we care.
It almost never happened, the pussies at the UN were all NO WAY and their Weapons Inspectors were coming back empty handed so we told them to get out and launched a devastating shock and awe attack on them anyway.
Luckily the Iraq thing overshadows the fact that when i was on the Board of Asea Brown Boveri, we sold light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea and we know they still got them so no need to make stuff up this time if we find oil under the northern part of the Korean peninsula.
Anyway, i am proud to have given the World The War Against Terror (T.W.A.T.) against nations like Iraq, Libya, Venezuela and Iran which, as luck would have it, just happened to be filled to the gills with oil, that's a known known.

Good Riddance Rummy

Usually, when someone dies, all the nice things are wheeled out about their achievements, decent qualities and public service but when it comes to Donald Rumsfeld, its not so easy because whatever he did it is overshadowed by the catastrophic war in Iraq and the million Iraqi graves his lies led directly to.
We know that within hours of the attack on 9/11, he was plotting on how to pin it on Saddam, saying 'Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only UBL. Go massive – sweep it all up. Things related and not'.
The outright lies, the distortions, the deliberate misdirection all came from Rumsfeld and led to a war to remove Saddam and take over the nation and most importantly, the huge oil fields.
My quote at the time was Saddam said he never had the weapons, George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld said he did so which of those proved to be the liars so it’s goodbye Donald, nobody will miss you but unfortunately the death and destruction continue in Iraq and Afghanistan so the results of your dreadful, vile, appalling lies will long outlive you.