Remembering Twain's War Prayer

War is awful, the premise being to inflict so much damage and kill enough of the other side that they have to give up and when you get one side overwhelmingly more powerful than the other, the death toll is horrendous.
What never changes is emotions run high and the rhetoric become absurd so we get the moronic Liz Truss making ridiculous statements that although the British military will not be lining up alongside Ukrainians, she would be happy to back British citizens who want to travel to Ukraine to fight Russia or as the Ukrainian minister put it, 'destroy as many Russian soldiers as we can'.
Regarding the Russia/Ukraine conflict, the only way out of this seems to be if the Russian's rise up and Putin is overthrown and applause must go to the tens of thousands of brave Russians protesting against the war in their name and currently being arrested and dragged to heaven knows what in Russian custody.
Whether it is Ukraine, Britain, America, Russia, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan or anyone, it makes me wince when i hear people saying they want to 'destroy' or 'kill' fellow human beings and the American writer Mark Twain wrote his elegant 'War Prayer' which should be essential reading for anyone not horrified to hear the emotive language of killing.

Twain puts forward two prayers, one uttered, one not, when a patriotic preacher prays for victory over a foe, praying that God watch over their noble young soldiers, bringing aid, comfort, and encouragement in their patriotic work.
An aged stranger appears and announces that he is God's messenger and explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves.

'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen'.

Yes i get that Ukraine are defending themselves against an aggressor and i also get that Russian's are killing Ukrainian's but it doesn't mean that we have to cheer or will the horrific deaths of young men and women, regardless of what side they are on.

Hiring The Removal Van Before WW3

Us humans are allegedly the smartest species on the planet but some people who have their finger on a giant red button that could annihilate all life on the planet obviously challenge that theory so with our leaders seemingly getting more and more stupider, it is almost inevitable that at some point we wil blow up our stupid selves and we will be watching a mushroom cloud spread out across the sky which means that we really should be considering the safest place to go should the big boom take place.
My first thought is that all the nuclear armed nations are in the Northern Hemisphere so while they are turning each others countries into giant holes, it would have to be South of the equator and there are no major air currents running from north to south so the radiation fall-out won't make it past the middle barrier but with half a world to look at, where should i park up?
Luckily there are computer simulations which determine the safest places and they suggest anywhere in New Zealand and it does have a warm, enjoyable climate to spend your end of days in comfort or Perth on the East coast of Australia which is well away from anything else, so should be safe but there is only one place where you would be safest, Antarctica.
Now i am sure Antarctica is a lovely place and the pro is that you won't be vapourised by a nuclear weapon or die coughing up your own internal organs from radiation poisoning but quite a large con is that it’s a bit chilly, my MetCheck weather app shows it is -48C there at the moment and i don't think my scarf and coat will cut it, even if i throw on my woolly bobble hat popping to the local shops is a gamble with returning with a pint of milk or becoming a Popsicle halfway there.
I think therefore that it would be New Zealand over Australia for three reasons, New Zealand's scenery is magnificent, New Zealander's seem very nice people and thirdly they speak English there, i'm not sure what they speak in Australia but it sure isn’t any type of English i know.

Places Not So Lovely This Time Of Year

Reddit has been running a poll of countries that people will not ever visit and why and there are the obvious ones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen because there is a war going on but there seems to be no lack of reasons for avoiding other places such as Italy because it is too loud.
Apparently Belize and Mexico have too many beggars, Cuba, Russia, India, Indonesia and the Philippines are too dirty, there is too much sexual harassment in Egypt and people want to swerve Japan and South Korea because it is just too weird there.
Finland, France, Luxembourg and Slovakia are too boring while poor old Canada is not only tagged as boring but too cold also so you could always go South into the warmer United States but people avoid there due to the racism but there is always Denmark, Norway or Slovenia at least if you got deep pockets because it is too expensive.
Reddit found that putting off visitors to the Czech Republic, Greece, Lebanon, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Turkey is how damned rude the people are but as hard as i looked, i couldn't find anything about Britain there so i assume everyone who comes here finds us Brits lovely, polite and adorable or maybe there was a whole page dedicated to the dreary British weather i just didn't see.

Kiev or Kyiv?

It was my son who asked me why Kiev is being spelt as Kyiv and pronounced as kee-yiv. I assumed it was the Ukrainian way of spelling and saying Kiev (as in the Chicken in breadcrumbs food) so i went and asked the Pronunciation Unit at work because the least we can do is say the name right and it turns out that there has been a Ukrainian campaign for years to get us Westerners to say and spell it right, i must have missed that email.
The short answer is that Ukrainians call their capital Kyiv (kee-yiv) but it was the Russian version of 'Kiev (kee-yev) which became accepted around the World and even more so when Chicken Kiev's became popular so as Russian tanks roll in Kyiv, if nothing else we can say the name the proper Ukrainian way.  
As for why it is usually called 'The Ukraine', that's us Westerners again and that goes back to the Soviet Union when Ukraine was part of the sprawling USSR and we used it when referring to that part of the Union but since 1991 when the USSR ceased to be and Ukraine gained independence, it became it's own country and 'the' should have been dropped but we had got so used to saying 'the Ukraine' that we just kept
saying it.  
There are other country names that are referred to with 'the', such as Congo, Gambia, Yemen, Lebanon, Sudan, Netherlands, Philippines and Bahamas but as for Ukraine, it's Capital is Kyiv and as is is not part of anywhere else anymore so we don't need to say 'the'.
If nothing else, and it is hard to see any silver linings however small, at least we have learnt that.

Dealing WIth Putin

I really didn't think Russia would invade Ukraine, i fully expected it to hang around the border menacingly so i was very surprised when i awoke to hear that the Russian military was stomping it's way towards Kiev.
The question now is what can the World do about Putin and his designs on Ukraine?
Military action against a nuclear Russia is out of the question and has been ruled out so it is financial sanctions but he has been building a multi-billion nest egg since taking Crimea in 2014 and it will be the Russian people who suffer, not him.
He has played the same card as America and Britain in their woeful wars against Iraq and Afghanistan of i'm going to invade so just you try and stop me, and now he has and we stand around bleating how awful it all is but unable to do very little to stop him slaughtering whoever gets in the way.
As this plays out on our TV screens, i am conflicted between how to approach it and recent history is not much use.
If we arm the Ukrainians it will just prolong an awful and bloody war and we end up with another Afghanistan and if we do nothing we potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives but Putin would have literally got away with murder and could be emboldened to turn his sights to other nations outside of NATO.      
That only leaves sanctions and they can take up to a decade to work and sanctions don't really do anything to punish the people starting the wars, they are insulated against economic downturns and it is their citizens who have to endure the hardship.
The threat of Human Right Courts won't scare him, George W Bush, Tony Blair and a host of Israeli leaders should have been in the dock but never got dragged to The Hague to answer for their war crimes so hardly likely Putin will, that just for the little guys.
So i don't know the answer when it is one of the most powerful, nuclear armed nations that brazenly invade another nation to remove a leader they don't like but i hope someone somewhere has an answer to it.

Why Did Boris Take His Peashooter To A Gunfight?

The West's intelligence services have been warning it was imminent for weeks but when Putin finally made his move it was the one that nobody at the CIA, MI6 or any of the other Intelligence Services mentioned, he officially recognised the Ukrainian Eastern Provinces he was pretty much de facto running anyway and then moved his troops in under 'security measures'.
The West's response was to impose sanctions on Putin and his cronies but Britain's sanctions were ridiculed, likened to taking a peashooter to a gunfight so why was Boris Johnson so reluctant to go hard on the sanctions?
The government said they have started off small as they want to be able to ratchet up sanctions if the Ukraine situation escalates further but many MP's are wondering if Johnson is afraid to upset the Russian money pouring into London which the leaked Pandora Papers showing £1.5bn of UK property owned by Russians accused of financial crime or with links to the Kremlin.
Boris Johnson said this week that: 'It’s very important that the house understands we do not raise money from Russian oligarchs' which is technically true as someone with only Russian nationality would not be able to legally donate to a UK political party but those with dual nationality do not have this problem, and the Home Office have issued 2,581 visas to Russian citizens.
A Labour party calculation based on Electoral Commission information estimated that donors who had made money from Russia had given £1.93m to the Tory party since Johnson became prime minister, the SNP's figures put the sum donated to Boris Johnson's Party at £2.3m inlcuding £700,000 from Lubov Chernukhin, a dual British national since 2011 and married to Vladimir Chernukhin who happens to be a former deputy finance minister under Putin and Alexander Temerko, also a dual UK national who handed over a £357,000 donation to the Conservatives and Mohamed Amersi, both working for a company controlled by an associate of guess who...the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
Boris may have been 'giving it large' with the threats and rhetoric over the past few weeks but when it comes to actually doing something, he faces accusations of putting his and his Parties finances first and as we have found out, Boris does like his donations big and hopefully, not found out about.

22/02/2022

Today, when we wake up and check the calendar, it will show 22 Feb 2022 and if you remember to look at the right time, for sixty seconds it will be 22:22 on 22/02/22 which is cool but much more exciting for Numerologists and people of a Spiritual bent.
To them, numbers in a repeating pattern possess a spiritual meaning which can serve as reminders, warnings, or messages from the universe and means you can expect messages related to a specific area of life on that day and all those 2's mean on this particular Tuesday it’s all emotions, intuition, and unity. Apparently it's the perfect day to manifest harmony in your relationships if you need it.
As it is also a Palindrome, and palindromic dates are days of learning important life lessons, it's a particularly good day for those who are at a crossroads in their career or relationships.
So what can we do on 22/2/2022 to ensure we are all of the above?
Make a special effort to work together to build a structure or platform that idealistically brings us together is the unhelpfully fluffy reply, especially as i was looking for a more solid 'Buy shares in Tesla' or buy a Lottery ticket from a newsagent whose name begins with B which would be much more useful, especially as i have still not sorted out my pension which means i cannot look at Numerology to keep me in my dotage.

Living With Covid To Save Boris's Job

Today we hear Boris Johnson's Government set out the plan for Living With Covid and that isn't the bit i am concerned about, it is the dying with Covid bit worries me as we are still registering over 1,000 deaths a week and 300,000 new infections which is higher than when we went into lock-down.
I don't think it is much of a stretch to imagine that Boris is doing this, and has actually brought the date forward by a month, to save his own neck as the public and his own MP's wait to see if the Police are going to charge him with breaking his own lock-down rules.   
The thinking seems to be that he will be charged but he can point to the rules no longer being in place so what's the problem, they were the old rules.
It is ironic that he was far too slow bringing in the rules which cost people their lives and now he is too early ending them which again will cost people their lives and that's coming from medical experts and scientists including his own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advisors who are calling the decision to end the restrictions early 'premature' and 'not based on current evidence' and the virus would receive a 'tremendous boost in transmission resulting in many more cases'.
Nobody should be in any doubt that Boris Johnson and his Government are sacrificing people's lives for the sake of his job, a job that he has performed so badly at that if you are a Conservative MP are are not one of those calling for him to go, then you really haven't been paying attention and hope you enjoy the opposition benches.

Why Is It So Windy in UK?

As the Jet Stream acts as a division between the cold, Polar air and the hot air from the Equator, the general rule is everything above it is wet and cold while everything below it is warm and dry but if you are stuck directly under it, you get the storms which get trapped in the Jet Stream delivered to your door.
The Jet Stream generally snakes up and down but for the past week it has been stuck directly over the UK flinging Dudley, Eunice and now Franklin our way over the past week and meteorologists are keeping an eye out for a potential Storm Gladys which could be coming on Thursday to render pointless any hairdresser appointments we may have.  
Not that this stormy weather isn't expected, our weather isn't random and there is something called a Weather Singularity which is the probabilities of certain weather types happening at the same dates based on geography, atmospheric conditions, the earth's rotation, sea conditions and other sciency stuff which happens at the same time each year and there is an 88% chance that from towards the end of February to 9 March, it will be, stormy and wet and windy.
There are many websites which will show you the Jet stream and forecast where it will be for the next few weeks so you can dress accordingly and the one above from netweather.tv shows where it is sat today (left pic above) and when we roll forward where it will be sat until 9 March (right pic above) and in my best meteorologist speak, that bad boy ain't going nowhere.
As we have another couple of weeks of watching our neighbours fences swing precariously, we had better get acquainted with the names of the storms as provided by the MET Office that the jet stream will deliver to us like a demented Deliveroo driver, so we have a good chance of greeting Herman, Imani, Jack, Kim and Logan and then they seemed to to take on a more exotic flavour with Méabh, Nasim, Olwen, Pól, Ruby, Seán, Tineke, Vergil and Willemien.
As the highest we have got to it in the names was K in 2015/16 (Storm Katie), if we get to Logan then we are in record breaking territory but the good news is that the windy and stormy singularities ends around 9th March and then we can expect some more settled weather...until March 22nd to March 31st when the next one arrives with a 67% chance of it being stormy so we better learn how to pronounce Willemien.

Eunice

Us Brits do like to talk about the weather and we have had weather up the ying-yang today as Storm Eunice huffed and puffed and blew the roof clean off our garage.
If nothing else i had a good view of birds doing their Usain Bolt impression and wheelie bins whirling through the sky like a scene from The Wizard of Oz as i parked the car.
I don't know who at the MET Office was responsible for naming Eunice, and Storm Dudley previously, but Eunice doesn't conjure up images of 127 mph winds bowling over trees, something like Dante or Harley would be more appropriate, Eunice and Dudley sound like a kindly elderly couple who puts milk out for hedgehogs.
I am sure that other nations roll their eyes when us Brits bang on about our weather but it really is fascinating, when I snuck outside for a vape about 9:30am it was sunny and calm, and an hour later when i went out again it was a twilight-esque dark grey and i had to dodge a wind assisted dustbin lid skidding towards me at high speed.
Luckily i spent all day in the office watching the storm unfold on TV watching the news bulletins with dripping wet presenters standing dangerously on beach-fronts, cliff edges and flooding rivers as they warned viewers that under no circumstances should anyone go anywhere near beach-fronts, cliff edges and flooding rivers.
As it took the local council almost a year and the intervention of US President candidate Bernie Sanders to replace a light bulb above my garage a few years ago, heaven knows who i will have to contact to get a roof put back on but i am googling Elon Musk's email address just in case.

Hard To Be Impartial And Balanced At These Three Wrongs

The Government have issued a 23 page document to schools giving guidance on teaching political issues called Political Impartiality In Schools to ensure that teachers give 'a balanced presentation of opposing views on political issues' and three examples of 'sensitive issues' it gives to be approached in a balanced way are Black Lives Matter, the ongoing Israel Palestine conflict and the British Empire.
Maybe it's because i am too much of a lefty that i look at those three and wonder just how you could give a balanced view on any of them.
The Black Lives Matter is an anti-racism movement which rose from the unlawful killing of black people by American Police and then spread out to condemn all racism in all walks of life. What would be the balanced view of that? You would need to be a complete racist to not find that an applaudable aim.
The Israel Palestine conflict which has been going on for over six decades, that's the British splitting Palestine in half and giving half to create Israel who have since gone on to not only steal the land of their neighbour but brutally oppress them. The religious try to argue for Israel based on their beliefs but that's very shaky ground for a military apartheid system which has left tens of thousands dead and faces regular
condemnation from Human Right's bodies.   
As for the British Empire, that's Britain murdering, raping, pillaging the natural resources of other nations around the World as well as enslaving millions to benefit ourselves so how could you present that in a balanced way, you would have to show that it was a good thing which it certainly was for us but not so good for the places where the Sun never set on the British Empire.
It hasn't escaped my attention that these are all left wing issues and the Impartial and Balanced guidance has come from a very right wing Government but i would love to hear how they recommend how any of these things can be presented in a balanced way because to oppose any of them would make you the type of vile, frothing at the mouth ignorant nutter who really should not be seen or heard.

Special Guest Blogger: The Tooth Fairy

Ever wonder where do your teeth go after they've either fallen out or been pulled out of your screaming skull by a sadist shining a bright light into your face?
If you don't swallow them (we don't want the ones that have worked their way out through your colon thanks very much) they are collected by people like me who receive an alert at Fairy HQ when someone say's the word 'Tooth Fairy'.
Now you are probably picturing Fairies, or Fae to give us our proper name, as something like Tinkerbell but there are two types, the 'Seelie Court' which are benevolent and helpful to you humans in need, so that's us along with Sprites and the Pixies and then you have the Unseelie Court which are ugly and horrifying and evil and malicious such as Elves (not Santa's guys, they are ok), Gnomes, Goblins, the Irish Leprechaun's and Trolls but you don't see many of them in the daytime as they hang about in caves, mountains or under bridges. Us Fae came about after a group of angels were thrown out of heaven as not 'Holy' enough but deemed not 'Evil' enough for hell so ended up inbetween and called ourselves Fairies.

As fairies have magical powers, but with no source of income, some of us decided to become cobblers, some started just hanging around in Gardens but some of us realised that teeth was where the money was and set up a business where we remove the tooth and leave a coin under the persons pillow.
Now there is no one common denomination for a single tooth but the better the condition the more cash we leave, so teeth free of cavities, well-brushed, low plaque and with a nice sheen get more than say one of Shane McGowan's gnashers but some fairies leave different rewards and it really just depends on the tooth fairies working in your area so look after your teeth kids or we may just start to withhold part of the payment.
You may be wondering what we do with all the teeth we collect? We collect the teeth so we can grind them down into Fairy Dust, the bad ones are much more work for us! We have to drill out all of the bad bits first so we don’t get nearly as much Fairy Dust from them.
All in all its not a bad job, the hours aren't great but thank God for the invention of Coca-Cola, now it's a job for life.

I'm Not Afraid Of No Ghosts

Whether it is down to the stress associated with lock-downs, social media or those microchips they put in the vaccine but reports of paranormal activity have rocketed in the last two years with the latest sighting being at the aptly named Dead Woman's Ditch in Somerset.
Numerous sightings have been reported of a ghostly woman in white who approaches visitors to the beauty spot and doesn't so much wail or do anything spooky, she just swears at them, telling them to 'F*ck Off'.
Local historians are saying she is probably the victim of a murder that took place in the late 18th century and the reason the place is so charmingly named.
One local dismissed it as a bit like Scooby Doo but the Ghost Hunters South West are now on the case and those meddling kids are poised ready with camera's and microphones to capture the 18th Century potty mouth but when i was a kid you couldn't swing a small child without hitting a poltergeist or something smashing all the plates in the kitchen cupboard and levitating young teenage girls in their beds but they seem to have disappeared.
The Alien's seemed to have gone quiet also, the number of American rednecks being anally probed by Martians has dived significantly although why an alien intelligence would travel across the vast expanses of space just to put something up a hillbilly's backside i never understood.
Hopefully this is the start of a revival although if the ghosts could keep the cussing to a minimum, it's not very classy and it would be appreciated.

London, Moscow & Washington Having A Good Ukraine Crisis

As much as i don't trust the despot and his Government in Moscow to be truthful, i also don't trust the Governments of Britain and America to be entirely straight with us either so who knows what Putin's plan is for Ukraine but as i said previously, it is not hurting Johnson in the UK or Biden in America who have a bogeyman to keep us safe from and deflect from their problems at home.
The Sun Newspaper had a headline on Tuesday that they had it on high authority that Russia would invade on Wednesday and when they never, the headline changed to the invasion was about to start 'at any time' which led to the Russian foreign ministry asking if the West could kindly publish any future schedule of Moscow’s invasions as she would like to plan a vacation.
As Biden, Putin and Johnson all issue warnings and threats, the calmest people seem to be the Ukrainians themselves despite being in the eye of the storm and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has even said that the constant talk of invasion has not been helpful and is having a detrimental effect to the economy, social stability and living conditions of the people of his nation.
The Russians are said to be withdrawing although there seems to be very little in way of the heavy artillery being moved back from the border and there are still over 130,000 Russian troops looking into its neighbour but while the West and Russia play bluff, it's the Ukrainians caught in the middle.
It is looking more and more like Putin, Johnson and Biden are playing to their own national audience which will make it even harder to back down so we could see this dragging on for months, then again i may be wrong and the citizens of Kiev wake up to find Russian troops outside their front doors but the only beneficiaries so far are the less than trustworthy regimes in Moscow, London and Washington DC.  

Why Isn't Valieva Kicked Out Of The Olympics?

It really shouldn't be this hard to understand but if a sportsman is caught taking a banned drug, they are kicked out of the Olympics so why Russian skater, Kamila Valieva, has been allowed to continue competing after failing a test for banned drug Trimetazidine i just don't understand.
The 15-year-old Russian figure skater is being allowed to continue competinbg at Beijing 2022 despite testing positive for banned angina drug trimetazidine and two others which are not currently banned.
The substances are all used for enhancing performance by increasing endurance and reducing fatigue so she has an advantage over the other competitors and she currently leads the race for Gold and is the favourite to win although the The International Olympic Committee have said that is she does win, there will be no medal ceremony
The reason put forward by the Russians is that her positive drugs test was due to contamination with her
grandad's medicine, possibly she used a glass that he had been drinking from and although i am no doctor, that sounds highly suspicious.
It is the other Olympians i feel sorry for, they know that they are not competing on a level playing field and that the young girl currently beating them has failed a drug test and has had an artificial advantage over them regardless of how the trimetazidine got into her body.
This all comes despite Russia being banned from the Olympics for wholesale drug abuse and Russian athletes competing under the Russian Olympic Committee flag but the other skaters would be justified in refusing to compete against her because it isn't fair to them after years of dedication, hard work and endless days of training to watch someone who has cheated their way to victory beat them.

Prince Andrew Pays For Problem To Go Away

After 11 futile attempts to get the case dismissed, Prince Andrew has gone from never met her, don’t remember the photograph, i was in Pizza Express in Woking that night and i can’t sweat to demanding a trial by jury and today here’s a big pile of money to go away with news that he has offered a substantial settlement to end the sexual assault court case against him.
To cap it off he has the brass neck to also: 'commend Guiffre's bravery' after he accused her of lying and dragged her name through the mud for years.
The friend of convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was accused of three cases of sexually assaulting Virginia Giuffre when she was 17 and he faced a trial later this year under oath where Guiffre's lawyers were due to call on Shukri Walker, who was willing to provide testimony in Giuffre’s civil lawsuit that she saw Andrew with Giuffre at a London nightclub as she: 'remembers the night clearly because she never saw a royal before or since'.
By playing the get out of trial free card to prevents this case going any further, an embarrassing court case may have been prevented but but while that may be acceptable in America, Brits see it in a very different way and judge it as as a tacit admissions of guilt.
To many it is paying for the problem, and the likely guilty verdict, to go away due to the accused holding a very weak case they wouldn't win in court, if they had a strong case they were confident of winning then why make any payment to the accuser at all?
He will forever be, in British eyes at least, the guy who sexually abused a minor and then bought her silence to avoid prosecution and although the sum of the settlement has not been disclosed, it is expected to be in the millions.
The question now then is who will pay it? The Queen has been paying his legal bills so far and if she is coughing up the dirty money for her son, money from our taxes which we shovel towards her, then it won't go down well.
What i take from this is that is that those with the funds of the rich can avoid punishment by being able to purchase their freedom without even acknowledging any culpability, and that is very, very, very wrong.

Still Time For Diplomacy In Ukraine

With the Russian troops continuing to build, an invasion of Ukraine is looking more and more likely but we do still hold out hope of a diplomatic solution and avoiding a military and bloody outcome.
Putin has obviously weighed up what he is sure to lose in economic sanctions against what he will gain by taking Ukraine and his goal is to not have NATO troops on the border of Russia, something which Western powers have made clear they will not rule out if Ukraine was to join NATO.
One solution is for Ukraine to adopt neutrality which was suggested by the French so Ukraine would agree to never join NATO but Ukraine are not keen on this.
The US President Joe Biden is warning that the world was standing at an 'inflection point in history' and called on Western democratic powers to unite which would the same nations who decided they didn't like the regimes in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria and invaded to bring in more Western friendly leaders, which is exactly what Russia is after now.
Regime change whether it is Western or Russian forces is wrong and results in death and destruction so Putin is wrong now as was Bush, Blair, Cameron and Obama previously but hopefully we can diplomatically prevent this war before it starts because the consequences if we don't is too awful to contemplate for tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians.

Lucy Museum of Musician's Top Valentine Songs

The Calendar shows February 14th, the day when us women say things like 'We don't need a day to show each other how much we love each other' but actually mean if you don't get me a card you will be cooking your own tea for a fortnight.
Valentine's Day is all about being in love and many ballads are of the break-up and insecurities kind and that's not what this day is all about, it's shouting from the rooftops 'I LOVE THIS PERSON WITH ALL MY HEART' and there are not as many songs as you would assume which qualify for the Lucy
Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's museum.  

You're Still the One - Shania Twain. Very sappy but i like it. Not so much about the first throws of love but very much about finding that special someone and through all the trials and tribulations remaining in love after everything.

Time Of You Life - Green Day. You wouldn't think the punk-pop kings would make it onto a Valentine's Love Songs List but to me it's not having any regrets and going for it, making those 'photographs and still frames in your mind' because you never know, it may just be the time of your life.

Nothing Can Change This Love - Sam Cooke. He may not know anything about History or Geography but he has a great voice and this is just a lyrically faultless song with Cooke's smooth vocals, subtle strings and a tinkering piano which just come together to create a beautiful song and starts with the promise of sending a letter everyday if he went a million miles away, a sentiment probably highly endorsed by the Post Office.

I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston. No love song list is complete without this one, a rare case of the copy being so much better than the Dolly Parton original. The part where the drum beat is followed by a split second of silence and then, out of thin air Whitney's superb vocals chime 'And I-I-I-I-I...' give me a tingle down the spine everytime.

Only Yesterday - The Carpenters. Karen sings about finding love and how yesterday she was sad and lonely but finding love showed her the way to leave the past behind and tomorrow maybe even brighter than today and isn't that what we are all hoping for?

Only You - Platters. This is a sublime ballad and probably almost the ultimate love song, sung faultlessly by the brilliant Tony Williams accompanied by the soft piano, the wispy sound of the drum brushes and the rest of the group singing soft backing vocals make this a perfect celebration of being in love and being with someone 'who fills my heart with love, my one and only you'. 

Never Enough - Loren Allred. If The Platters song is almost the ultimate Love Song, this one is it. It has everything, the slow build, the amazing lyrics about the stars being stole from the night sky nor all the towers of gold being enough and Loren's beautiful voice. If you don't get a lump in your throat you have either never been in all encompassing love or you are dead inside.

Brexit Opportunities

It would be easy to mock arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg who has been appointed as the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and has issued a plea to readers of the tabloid Sun Newspaper to write to him if they can identify any possible benefits of Brexit.
The Tory MP published a letter in Thursday's edition of The Sun asking for suggestions because obviously he was buggered if he could think of any benefits to us leaving the largest Free Market on the Planet which was conveniently situated right on our doorstep but at this Blog we are nothing but helpful so let's see if we can come up with any.
Well, there is the...hang on that's 4% of our GDP we are losing so not that so what about...hmm...we did but we could do that anyway so not that either.
There is always the lack of...nope, miles of tailbacks at the Dover port but what about the....oh that's right, staff shortages leading to the empty shelves, i forgot about that.
It's a bit of a stretch but i guess we have become...oh yeah the Northern Ireland border...come on Lucy, think!
There is that agreement with Australia for lamb but one agreement for a few million pound against the one we left worth hundred's of billions and anyway the Farmers protested against it, as did the Fisherman who have now lost their market...wow, this is hard.
Maybe the Sun readers will come up with something but from what i can see, the only one benefiting from Brexit is the new Brexit Opportunities Minister who has a new cushy job in the Government, there you go, there's one for you Jacob. You are welcome.

Famous Dead Bloggers II Ebook

 

Famous Dead Bloggers II
Welcome to Famous Dead Bloggers ebook where we resurrect famous dead people such as Giacomo Casanova, Steve Irwin, Pablo Picasso, Mary Seacole, Nicolaus Copernicus, Vincent van Gogh,Yuri Gagarin, Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies


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Famous Dead Saints Ebook

Famous Dead Saints
Welcome to Famous Dead Saints where we resurrect famous dead Saints such as Saint Andrew, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Symeon the Stylite, Saint Olaf of Norway, Saint Christopher, Saint George, Saint Drogo, Saint Paul and Saint Sebastian and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies.

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Famous Dead Movie Stars Ebook

Famous Dead Movie Stars
Welcome to Famous Dead Movie Stars where we resurrect famous dead movie stars such as James Dean, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Bruce Lee, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlie Chaplin, Alan Rickman, Errol Flynn, Farah Fawcett, Marlon Brando and Natalie Wood and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies.


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Famous Dead World Leaders Ebook

Famous Dead World Leaders
Welcome to Famous Dead World Leaders ebook where we resurrect famous dead World Leaders such as Nicolae Ceausescu, Indira Gandhi, Charlemange, Kim Jong Il, Leonidas I, Peter The Great, Deng Xiaoping, Vladimir Lenin, Nelson Mandela, King Louis XVI, Boris Yeltsin, Cleopatra, Alexander The Great and Napoleon Bonaparte and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies.

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Don't Call Us Uri, We'll Call You

A team mapping radio waves in the universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour and it’s unlike anything astronomers have seen before although the scientists at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research believe that it is probably a type of slowly spinning neutron star but spoon bender Uri Geller believes that the mysterious energy bursts are aliens preparing for a mass landing on Earth.
Hmmm...tell us more Uri.
'No doubt in my mind that this is connected to alien intelligence way, way superior than ours. They are preparing us for a mass landing soon!'
Tell you what Uri, thanks but let's go with the Scientists explanation for now but if a couple of thousand little green men show up and demand to be taken to our leader, we will call you.

Look At Our Shiny New Military Weapon While Shivering

Every Government receives a certain amount to spend and how it decides to spend it is based on it's own politics and ideology so what it spends on Welfare, NHS or Education is a decision they make, they can raise or cut it depending on the leader of the day.
The Conservatives decided early on to not fund the NHS as much as other Governments, a decision which after 10 years of serious underfunding, came back to bite it hard when COVID-19 hit and staff, bed and PPE shortages had it panicking.
Years of Austerity and a cut in Foreign Aid were sold to us as essential to reduce the UK debt and the Boris Johnson Government seem to have taken the only other route to book balancing, raising taxes.      
Come April the extra 1.5% of National Insurance will hurt when it comes alongside utility prices rising by 54% and inflation reaching an expected 7% and the foolishness of Brexit will further reduce choice and spending power so it is galling to read that the Government is writing off £9 billion of unusable PPE and £4 billion in COVID fraud.
Something which has been crept quietly out is the £1.4bn the Government have set aside for a new military space programme which 'underpins vital, battle-winning technologies' and 'seek out and seize the enduring strategic advantage opportunities offered by space'.
The book balancing doesn't seem to have affected the weapons of war, the defence budget was increased by 12% in 2020 to £50.6 billion, twice as much as it spends on Employment.
The defence budget includes the UK's 255 Nuclear Weapons which costs £4.5 billion annually which is weapons we will never use and if we do, there will not be a World left afterwards to worry about but it is worth remembering that the next time the Government of the 5th richest nation in the World
wrings it hands and announces cuts and tax rises, it is a question of what they are spending it on and not how much they have to spend.  
At least GCHQ will be able to watch you shivering in your house from seven miles up come April.

Grand Solar Minimum

As the effects of Cimate Change are now becoming more prominent, the Climate Change deniers are no longer even trying to argue that the Planet is warming, their new embarrasingly awful argument they are parroting is that humans did not cause the change but it is a natural phenomenon and it will correct itself without our help under the Grand Solar Minimum.
Someone has obviously been reading their kids science textbooks and noticed the bit that says a Grand Solar Minimum is an actual thing and is when the Sun gives off less energy as part of its natural cycle and scientists are predicting that we are due such a period although it will hardly be noticeable down here on Planet Earth as at the most these events reduce temperatures by is 0.2C.  
As the Planet has been warmed by human activity by 1.2C and is heading towards 2.5C, the deniers don't want to be digging out their thermal underpants just yet, especially as Scientists are saying that
temperature rises weren't caused by the changes in the Sun's cycle because the layer of atmosphere nearest the earth is warming, while the layer of atmosphere closest to the Sun is cooling so the heat which would normally be released into the stratosphere is being trapped just above us by greenhouse gases.
Nice try though, ignorant and uninformed obviously, but nice to know that the laughably uninformed are still in their swinging.

Ukrainian Tinderbox Suits Putin, Biden and Johnson

The word tinderbox is getting a good airing recently, mostly as the description of what's happening on the Ukrainian border which is amounting to very little.
The 100,000 Russian troops are still on their own side of the border and some parts of the West are talking up an imminent invasion but they have been calling it imminent for weeks now and been scurrying around pointing to the East and given dark warnings of World War III.
For journalists, the lack of anything happening has seen the story slip down the news agenda and now it is being referred to as a tinderbox or a powder-keg meaning all the ingredients are there but as yet, nothing is going on.
Keeping it on the news agenda is important to the three main protagonists as Putin, Biden and Johnson all have falling ratings and if they can keep the focus on something else, it makes them look good and distracts from their problems at home.   
So we get America and Britain stoking up the rhetoric with intelligence that shows Russia are about to launch a false flag attack based on a video which shows 'dead' Russian troops after being attacked by Ukrainians and use it as pretext to invade. The American journalists seemed to have learnt their lessons from being so weak during the George W Bush era and asked for proof with the reply that they would just have to trust them.
Boris went to Ukraine and talked tough about what he would do if 'Putin so much as put his big toe into Ukraine' but was then roundly ignored by the Ukrainian reporters.
The Russians are denying any plans to invade but you would be as foolish to just trust him and you would be to trust the British and American intelligence but the only Government not trying to build it up is Ukraine itself, their won experts saying that the 100,000 Russians invasion force would need to be closer to 300,000 to launch a serious attack and the soldiers present are not deployed in strike forces nor are they supplied with sufficient ammunition, fuel, field hospitals and other types of essential equipment.
The status quo is presently perfect for the three leaders in Moscow, London and Washington DC so we can expect the rhetoric to continue for a while yet because they are hoping that if their citizens are looking over there, they are not looking closer to the shambles at home.

Famous Dead Christmas Bloggers Ebook

Famous Dead Christmas Bloggers

Welcome to Famous Dead Christmas Bloggers ebook where we resurrect famous Christmas Characters such as King Herod, Archangel Gabrielle,  Father Christmas, Wenceslaus I, The Ghost of Christmas Future,  A Bethlehem Shepherd and  Clement Clarke Moore ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies

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Famous Dead Killers Ebook

Famous Dead Killers
Welcome to Famous Dead Killers ebook where we resurrect famous dead murderers such as Billy The Kid, Baba Anujka, Benjamin Hornigold, Wild Bill Hickock, Clyde Barrow, Black Bart, Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Al Capone, Ivan the Terrible and Osama Bin Laden and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies

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Getting The Feeling We Are Being Cheated

Johnny Rotten asked 'Ever get the feeling your being cheated' and the answer is a resounding yes when it comes to the Fuel Bill hike.
Nice of the Government to lend us £200 to pay our increasing utility bills, they want it back obviously because the UK is £2.2 billion in debt but it was awful timing by Shell to announce they made a £19.3bn profit last year a day after it was announced that the average gas and electric bill will increase for everyone by 54%, or £693.
The cause of the increase has been blamed on a record rise in global gas prices and the Government has considered cutting VAT and Green levies but plumped for lending us a third of the money to pay the Utility companies instead.
That way the rise is still an eyewatering £493 but the Utility companies such as Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, E.On, Scottish Power and Centrica get to keep their billions of pounds in profits.
The bosses of the Big Six energy firms remain some of the highest earners in the UK. In 2019 the Centrica chief executive was paid £2.4m and the boss of SSE, received £1.6m so under the Governments deal, they will still get paid in full.
Shell did not even try to hide their priorities, tweeting that they have: 'ambitious plans to generate shareholder value' and there is the rub, we pay more so they can keep up their profits and pay the shareholders.
The Labour Party suggested a windfall tax on the billions made by the companies to offset the rise in prices but the Government never even entertained that idea, preferring to wring their hands and loan us the money to pay the mega-rich companies, companies which have donated more than a million pounds to the Conservatives since 2019.
Companies that pay that much do not do it out of kindness or altruism, they pay it so when they want something, they are almost certain to get it and what they wanted was their profits to not be dented, and the Government have made sure they won't be.
To answer you Johnny, yes, we are being well and truly cheated as well as screwed, deceived, gypped, conned, scammed, duped, hoodwinked, swindled and ripped off.

Amnesty Report: Israel A Regime Of Oppression

I have never really understood what America gets out of backing Israel, it just makes them implicit in one of the greatest wrongs since the 1940's, bankrolling a nation to continue it's genocide against the Palestinians.
Israel does not have many friends around the globe and yesterday Amnesty International issued a report accusing Israel of practicing forced evictions, unlawful killings and severe restrictions on movement and freedom and called it 'a regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis–a system of apartheid'.
Sounds about right to me but as expected the Israeli Government rejected it, spouting the usual monotonous 'anti-semitism' but the US State Department also rejected the report, saying that: 'As the world’s only Jewish state, the Jewish people must not be denied their right to self-determination' which misses the point because nobody is trying to stop the Jewish people from their self-determination, they just want them to not militarily oppress and kill their neighbours while they are doing it.
One reporter asked why the State Department rejected the Amnesty report on Israel's Human Rights abuses but accepted and endorsed the same group on abuse in China, Cuba, Iran, and Syria for which the State Department cited a lack of other sources for refusing to accept it which must have come as a surprise to the collection of human rights groups who expressed their support for Amnesty’s report, themselves putting out a statement that stated they they 'wholeheartedly reject the idea that Amnesty International’s report is baseless, singles out Israel, or displays antisemitic animus' and then called the Israel government’s charges of antisemitism 'spurious'.
One Jewish Group in America agreed and said that: 'the US and American Jewish establishment can't have it both ways. You can't savage Amnesty International's and Human Rights Watch’s work on Israel-Palestine without undermining their work everywhere else'.
The vast majority of the problems are due to Israel, a people who were once the brutally oppressed themselves, and America is giving financial and political assistance to it's brutal, violent and abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians by handing over $4 billion a year of American taxpayers money to Israel.
If America stopped bankrolling Israel, it wouldn't be able to maintain such a large military presence, so it would have to make peace with its neighbour or go bankrupt, ending the 70 year brutal oppression of the Palestinian people and making Israel less of the the pariah state that it currently is and richly deserves to be.

On Reflection, Rogan Is A Moron Afterall

 I have never gone along with the quote attributed to Voltaire that 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it'. For my money if what you are about to say is so utterly boneheaded, then i would prefer you didn't say it at all and i certainly wouldn't defend your right to say it and i would gladly see everyone pile in on you because you didn't have the sense to keep your mouth shut and keep the inanity in your head.
I said recently that i know nothing of Joe Rogan and was only aware of his statement regarding Ivermectin in the treatment of Covid-19 but thought that the drug he was talking about was human Ivermectin and the people taking it and dying were buying the over the counter Ivermectin used for Horses and Cattle and said that if he explained it to his less than cerebral listeners, he could go some way to placating people but then i  read some more of the stuff he has been peddling and i think maybe he is a bit of a moron afterall.
He said that the RNA Vaccine's can alter your DNA but your DNA are the instructions of how to build your body and the RNA is the messenger, carrying instructions to your cells to instruct your immune system to start producing antibodies and doesn't interact with your genetic material at all.
The Ivermectin can cure Covid claim was based on some very weak research papers and there are no studies which show evidence of the drug's effectiveness and the countries which relied heavily on Ivermectin, like Brazil and Peru, had some of the worst death tolls from the virus.
He has also said that that if you get vaccinated after having had Covid, you're at greater risk of
harmful side effects such as blood clots and heart inflammation which was based on a UK study which never mentioned them and showed mild after effects, such as fatigue, chills and headaches, the blood clots and heart inflammation was pure Rogan's own fanciful conclusion of the study.
He has also said for young people, the health risks of inflammation of the heart muscle and blood clots from the vaccine are greater than from Covid but the same UK paper shows that younger people are at much lower risk of serious illness from Covid, but those symptoms are more common in young people who have had Covid-19.
On reflection then, and without even looking into his Climate Change denial claims, if he is trying to persuade people not to get vaccinated by either being ignorant, willfully misrepresenting the data or flat out lying, then i retract my assertion that he could simply placate people by spelling out his belief in Ivermectin and lump him in with the dangerous idiots category of which there are unfortunately quite a few of the morons.

You Looking At Us?

The James Webb infra-red telescope is in place and we can expect to see from amazing pictures coming back from it soon as it examines objects over 13.6 billion light-years away meaning, because of the time it takes light to travel across the vast Universe, it will be looking at objects as they were 13.6 billion years ago.
To flip that around, if there are any beings there looking our way they just see the inky blackness of Space because to them we are not there yet as Earth was created only 4.5 billion years ago.
That did make me wonder how far we can see with the naked eye and what would anyone on a far distant planet looking at us less than 4.5 billion light years away see?
The European Space Agency state that of the approximate 9,000 Space objects that we can look at without a telescope, the nearest star we can see is Alpha Centauri which is about 4.3 light years away and the farthest is 4,000 light years away, in the constellation Cassiopeia but the most distant object visible to the unaided eye is The Andromeda Galaxy 2.5 million light years away.
To put that into perspective, anyone in Alpha Centuri would be looking at us from about 26 trillion miles away as we were in 2018 but the Cassiopian's would see us in 1978 bc when the ancient Egyptians were a thing but anyone looking on from the Andromeda Galaxy would see us as we were 2.5 million years ago when we were transitioning from ape like mammals to the very earliest hominids.     
Does make you realise why nobody from Andromeda has paid us a visit, they are probably thinking those Earthlings need a few more million years to evolve first while the Alpha Centurian's are obviously waiting for Justin Bieber to finish his singing career before coming our way.

Cosmos Saying I Should Keep My Big Mouth Shut

We have just got back from a short stay with some Chinese friends to celebrate the Chinese New Year and i never want to see a noodle ever again so Xīnnián kuàilè 新年快乐 to all Mandarin speakers.
I left my work phone at home and got back to so many missed calls and texts and Whatapps messages so that turned out to be a wise decision because in those four days that i was dropping noodles off chopsticks onto my clothes and supping Baijiu (at 60% proof you have to sup it or you will be flat on your back), Boris Johnson and his party went into meltdown.
The Gray report was immediately followed by Boris attempting to throw the dead cat of Keir Starmer not prosecuting Jimmy Saville which bounced forcibly straight back into his smirking face with five (at the moment) of his team quitting at the erroneous slur.
Apart from the few ridiculous cabinet members usually seen brown nosing the Prime Minister, the Conservative Party are talking of when and not if Boris is unceremoniously dragged from Downing Street but i for one hope he hangs around a bit longer, he is doing so much damage to his own party as it implodes that the other parties just need to sit back and let them get on with them inflicting the irreparable damage on themselves.
While away i did get a nudge from the Universe through the medium of 90's singer Annie Lennox and her song 'Why', a song i haven't heard since the 90's and then hearing three times in two days and so i looked up the lyrics to see just what the Cosmos was trying to tell me.    
It was a song sung by Annie Lennox when Dave Stewart and her split and was about her nervousness of going it alone and seems to be blaming herself for the split as in the lines 'I told myself too many times, Why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut' and 'How many times do I have to try to tell you, That I'm sorry for the things I've done' but those bits don't particularly ring true so i looked some more and hit 'Why can't you see this boat is sinking, Let's go down to the water's edge' which i did get as our hotel was on a river and my husband and i spent many hours just sitting watching the wildlife serenely float by and there was a couple of sunken, abandoned rowing boats which became visible once the tide went out.
We did have a conversation about all the travelling i have been doing these past 18 months and how it's either moving or finding a new job closer to home, neither of which is very appealing, but usually whenever the Cosmos sends me a sign through music they do make sense but i am stumped with this
one unless it is warning me to 'keep my big mouth shut', possibly while attempting to eat noodles because noodle sauce stains on a white jumper is not a dignified look for anyone. Thanks Annie, just say it earlier next time!!

Famous Dead Holy Rollers Ebook

Famous Dead Holy Rollers
Welcome to Famous Dead Holy Rollers ebook where we resurrect famous dead Religious folk such as Buddha, Arius, Pope Innocent VIII, Thomas Cranmer, Aleister Crowley, Muhammad, Marcion of Sinope, Matthew Hopkins, Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and Jesus and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies.


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Famous Dead British Royals Ebook

Famous Dead British Royals
Welcome to Famous Dead British Royals ebook where we resurrect famous dead British Royalty such as Alfred the Great, King Charles I, Queen Mother, King Athelstan, William the Conqueror, Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth I, King George III, Queen Victoria and Henry VIII and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies.

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Famous Dead Americans Ebook

Famous Dead Americans
Welcome to Famous Dead Americans ebook where we resurrect famous dead Americans such as John F Kennedy, Babe Ruth, Neil Armstrong, Harry Houdini, Rosa Parks, Steve Jobs, Orville Wright, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali and Fred Trump and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies.

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Famous Dead Musicians Ebook

Famous Dead Musicians
Welcome to Famous Dead Musicians ebook where we resurrect famous dead Musicians such as Bill Haley, Syd Barrett, Bach, Roy Orbison, George Michael,
Marvin Gaye, Janis Joplin, Prince, David Bowie, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash,
Whitney Houston and Freddie Mercury and ask them how they viewed their life and their legacies.

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