2022 Father Time & The Grim Reaper

Old Father Time walked up the pathway to the bench, the 2022 sash in his hand ready to be replaced by the one for 2023. Already seated there was the Grim Reaper and Time noticed that he had been there a while looking at the amount of cigarette butts littered around him.
'You're late' said Death as he moved his scythe to allow the old man to sit down.
'You're early' replied Time and Death shrugged 'Not so busy this year, the pandemic seems to have slowed down and not so many wars, at one point last year i thought i was going to have to take on an apprentice'.
'Less wars is a good thing i guess' said Time before adding 'not for you obviously'.   
'It's a strange one as i can normally rely on America and the UK to invade somewhere but they have both been a big disappointment this year, one has a leader who is never awake long enough to pick a fight with anyone and the other one kept changing leaders'.
'That Russian guy helped keep the numbers up i guess' said Time folding his tattered, old sash and picking up the the reapers 2022 Book of Death and flicking through it casually.   
'Big name this year was that British Queen' said death cheering up, 'there was also Mikhail Gorbachev, Shane Warne, Ray Liotta, Sidney Poiter, Kirstie Alley and  Irene Cara, Taylor Hawkins, Meat Loaf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Terry Hall so we could have a pretty good band if we wanted'.
Time nodded and sighed at the name Olivia Newton-John.
'Ah, lovely lady, i did put her off a few times but the Big Guy said i couldn't do it again' he shrugged. 'So what's new with you?'
'Mother Nature has really stamped her foot down this year' replied Time pulling the 2023 sash over his head and flattening it down against his thin chest, 'Floods, record heat temperatures, snowstorms, she really is going all out to make these humans pay for polluting her Planet'.
'It's the idiots own fault' laughed Death looking at his pocket-watch, 'a woman scorned and all that'.
'They have had enough warnings' agreed Time pushing himself up off the seat, 'Are you ready?'
'I suppose' replied Death picking up his scythe and pulling a cloth from his pocket and giving the edge a quick wipe, 'no rest for the wicked and 2023 is going to be busy, Mother Nature will make sure of that' Death said tucking his Death Book into his shroud before adding' And don't ask, no spoilers'
'Do you think things will ever change?' asked Time.
'Nah, always going to be wars and always going to be those religious types killing each other because they think their God is more loving and peaceful than the other' which made Time chuckle 'very true'.
'Same time next year then' said Time as he waved a hand and shuffled left through the door marked 2023.
Death watched him go and then walked in the opposite direction whistling the tune of (I Just) Died in Your Arms.

Greta Thunberg V The Sex Trafficker

2022 comes to an end with one of the greatest stories of the year and it all begins when former kick-boxer and professional misogynist Andrew Tate, who was reinstated on Twitter, decided to celebrate his comeback and attempt to bolster his chauvinistic reputation to his fans by sending a tweet to Climate activist Greta Thunberg which said: 'Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions'.
The brilliant Greta, not one to back down, replied: 'Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.'
It would be funny enough if the story ended there but it goes up another level when her hysterical reply gained traction and began trending, being liked 3.5 million times and shared directly 650,000.
Tate, obviously miffed that he had been so thoroughly taken down by a female, smouldered about it and hours later tweeted out a video in which he tried to reassert his masculinity by blathering on about what a virile, red blooded man he was in a dressing gown, with a cigar and a pizza box which clearly had Romanian branding on it which tipped off the Romanian police to his location and the Romanian Police were after him for alleged rape and sex trafficking.
Not long afterwards, the Authorities swooped and arrested him and his brother and they are now both sat in a Romanian cell awaiting trial.
Again, if it ended there it would be glorious, the fact that if he had not tried to demean and humiliate Thunberg he would not have attracted the attention to himself which saw him arrested but the majestic Greta had one more tweet to send which was the final coup de grâce to the whole sage.
Her tweet simply said: 'This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes' and has been liked 2.6 million times.

Psychic Review 2022 Was Another Bust

There is a lady who lives in my block who insists on telling me important things which my Grandad wants to pass on to me. He died in 1987 but apparently he comes to her at certain times to whisper in her ear although he refuses to tell her what his unusual middle name was as proof it's him and not just some batty woman hearing imaginary voices in her head stopping me by the lifts.
Whether she is a well meaning nut or actually believes in it i don't know but people do come to her for tarot readings and things and as far as i am aware she doesn't charge and just does it for fun but there are some people out there who will spout off for a couple of tenners or more and every year i do the psychic predictions on here and every year they are, to be polite here, shite.
All of the psychics i have ever used on here charge for their services and last year's was Nicolas Aujula who charges between £350 to £1950 for him to consult the spirits and find out what is in your future.
That's the theory but in reality of the 10 predictions he gave for 2022, he scored nothing, none, nought, zero, a duck, nowt, zilch, zip, nada, sweet F.A., not a sausage and just in case any Klingon's are reading, pagh.
Usually the physics get at least one right just by pure chance but Mr Aujula was so far out that he wasn't in the same country let alone ball park so i'm not even going to bother to explain how wrong he was, they are here if you are interested but let's just say if you are willing to pay him £350 for a prediction then let's hope that you find a new hobby once you start taking the right medication.
With that in mind, i'm not going to bother doing it this year for two reasons, the Psychics have finally cottoned on that smart arsed bloggers write down what they say and review them at the end of the year and point out that their predictions have been spectacularly wrong and the second reason is that of the psychic channels i have visited, the predictions have been of the vague 'Hollywood star dies' and 'Massive Earthquake in Asia' type which will obviously come true over the next 12 months, predictions i could make and i wouldn't fake i was told them by some long dead spirit and then charge anyone £350 for them. 

A to Z of 2022

How are we at the end of 2022 already?
It doesn't seem like it was 12 months ago that i was singing Auld Lang Syne and doing that strange cross armed handshake thing with a bunch of people i didn't know but the calendar doesn't lie so here's my A to Z of what went on since the new Calendar went up on the wall 52 weeks ago.   




A - Abortion Rights In America. What abortions rights you ask? Exactly. Chalk one up for the Bible Squad.

B -  Boris Johnson. He came, he saw, he got caught lying once too often and his own party refused to work with him and when the Conservative Party think you are a liability while they have Priti Patel and Suella Braverman sat right there, you know you have hit rock bottom. Was the worst Prime Minister ever until his immediate successor relegated him to second worst.   

C - Climate Change. Mother Nature stamped her feet and said it's not my job to keep you mugs alive, take this and broke almost every weather record in a tantrum.

D - Deliver, Deliver, Deliver. Liz Truss threw this into every speech and she did deliver, shame it was a wrecked economy after her 6 week debacle.

E - Elon Musk. A man who bought Twitter for $44 billion then fired the board of directors, laid off 50% of the workforce and then resoundingly lost a poll he set up asking if he should quit.

F - FIFA. Took the World Cup to Qatar who said everyone was invited as long as you’re not gay, into science or ask about the 6,000 dead workers or anything.

G - Gorbachev. Everyone's favourite Russian despite accidentally taking the Soviet Union out of existence but embracing Capitalism with a commercial for Pizza Hut.
 
H - Heat or Eat. A much used phrase during the economic debacle this winter but many old people couldn't decide and conveniently for the Government died instead rather than bother them with such things.

I - Inflation. The Bank of England's job is to keep it below 2% so when it hit 11% boy there was some red faces, mostly people doing star jumps to keep warm because they now couldn't afford to turn on the heating.

J - James Webb Space Telescope. Replacement for the Hubble Telescope which means we can now see even more galaxies, black holes, quasars, stars and asteroids which we can smash our old satellites into.

K - King Charles III. Took over as Monarch aged 74 and his first act as sovereign was to moan about the pens in Buckingham Palace.  

L - Lionesses. An England football team who is actually good and won a major competition? 22 women chase a ball for 120 minutes and, at the end, England actually win and we all get a good view of Chloe Kelly's sports bra.

M - Matt Hancock. When you are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and breaking the rules you demanded other people follow, going to Australia and eating the genitals of various animals is sometimes the only answer. He finished 3rd after a concerted effort from his Office which stank as did his breath, of Kangaroo anus.   

N - Nuclear Fusion. Scientist created a nuclear reaction that combined two atoms to create one or more new atoms with slightly less total mass where the difference in mass is released as energy where energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Nope, nor me but they seemed excited about it.

O - Omicron. The milder smaller brother of the Covid-19 virus which allowed the World's Governments to forget it ever existed in the first place.
 
P - Palace Racist. When you ask someone 5 times where they are 'really' from and they continually say Britain, it is safe to assume they are British unless you are 83 year old Lady Susan Hussey who refused to believe a black person can also be British.

Q - Queen Elizabeth II. Responsible for 70 years of rule and an extra day off in September to watch her funeral which nobody did. Thanks Lizzie.

R - Rishi Sunak. Rejected by his own MP's then rejected by his own Party Members but got to become Prime Minister by default anyway because he was the only one stupid enough to put his name forward once Liz Truss buggered it all up.

S - Strikes. All the Nurses, Teachers and train drivers who kept us alive and kept the nation running through the two years of lockdown found out that clapping on the streets and being called Heroes doesn't translate into them being paid an inflation equaling pay rise, the Government telling them to take the real-terms paycut like everyone else. Damn Cheek

T - Trump. As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, sulk like a toddler and baselessly claim that an election was stolen from you and then try, try again which is what the lardo has done with his announcement that he will run for President again. Low IQ Americans everywhere got excited at his potential comeback.

U - Ukraine. Invaded by Russia which meant that they got the sympathy vote at the Eurovision Song Contest and relegated us to Runner Up. Plans to request France invade us just before the next one were postponed when we got given it anyway as Ukraine was deemed too unsafe to host it.

V - Voting. Three Prime Ministers in 3 months, the second one voted for by 48,000 Conservative Party members and the third one voted for by 150 MP's so in one of the oldest Democracies in the World, a nation which goes to war to enforce Democracy elsewhere, its not such a thing.  

W - Will Smith. The actor learnt a valuable lesson when he slapped Chris Rock across the face at the Oscar Ceremony. Wear gloves next time, his hand must have stung something cruel afterwards.

X - SpaceX. Making great strides in Space Exploration and the capsules looks really cool inside which is surprising as the company is run by a complete tool.

Y - Ye. Never the most cerebral of people, the musician formally known as Kanye called 400 years of slavery 'a choice' and followed that up teaming up with anti-Semites, lunching with Donald Trump and twittering swastikas while telling people to stop hating on Hitler, denied the Holocaust and said he was 'going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE'.  

Z - Zelenskyy. A comedian who became the leader of his nation and is inspiring and leading them against one of the Worlds military superpowers which is different to most western leaders who make people laugh AFTER they take power.

It Didn't Have To be Like This

The MET Office have ominously announced that 2022 was the hottest year on record and the year kept breaking new extreme weather records and scientists warn that extreme weather due to climate change is set to get worse, stating that the 10 years which recorded the highest annual temperature since 1884 have all been since 2002.
In England during three days of the late-July heatwave, 900 more people died than usually do at that time of year as UK temperatures hit 40C for the first time ever, grounding flights, buckling train-lines and causing devastating blazes that destroyed homes.
Europe suffered a record number of wildfires and pollution levels along with its worst drought in 500 years and the World Food Programme called the drought in Africa the world's first climate change-induced famine.
A heatwave in India and Pakistan followed by record-breaking monsoonal rainfall wiped out 50% of some crop yields and displaced 32 million people, destroyed 1.7 million homes, and killed more than 1,700 people.
The climate situation is urgent and has been known and understood by scientists since the 1950s, i picked up the cause in the mid 80s so we have had at least 70 years to do something and for all the COP summits, we have not done enough to give up the air polluting fossil fuels.
The Carbon Dioxide levels are still increasing and we are in a perilous position but you do have to wonder how many disasters will it take for our leaders, the people who can actually bring about the needed changes, to take some meaningful action?
So people will die and land will be taken by the rising sea levels but it really didn't have to be this way, although it looks like it will be.

Right Wing Terrorism

The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) have said in its annual report that the threat posed by the right wing is steadily increasing and has been since 2017 and they have more people on the MI5 radar than ever.
The Counter Terrorism Prevent scheme, introduced after Islamic Terrorist attacks, is now predominantly focused on far-right extremism so the obvious question is what happened around 2017 which led to the right-wing becoming such a destructive force.
It is clear that hateful far-right sentiments are rising across the world but it is over the last decade that right wing dogma surged and in the UK we can put that firmly in the camp of the Brexit vote which made immigration one of its main planks and was a reason cited by many the reason why they voted for Brexit.   
People like Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and his government used words like 'immigrant invasion' to stir up ill-feelings and the usually subdued right wing found  allies in the seat of power and were emboldened to bring their racist rhetoric to the fore.
In America, an already racist nation, Donald Trump never even tried to hide his racist tendencies and the American right rose to his immoral utterances and the nation is dangerously split down ideological lines while in other places like Brazil, Israel, Poland and Hungary extreme right wing xenophobic leaders spit out their poison to oppress and present 'others' as somehow lesser human beings.
On the extreme end of the right-wing ideological chart is Fascism and that is where many of the right-wing are heading although many will disagree because of the connotation of previous Fascist states which caused so much death and destruction in the last century.
That's not to say that there is not left wing terrorism, the extreme end of the left wing ideological chart is Communism and that has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths itself so there should be no finger pointing but i don't know anyone advocating Communism on the left, there energy seems to be on making society fairer for all and that is the difference.
The left wants a cleaner less polluted world, equality and a fairer society while the right seem to be advocating for a society which seems some members of it oppressed, the poorest in society denigrated and the harsh inequality to remain and they seem to have found leaders who want the same selfish things.
The right's views have always been abhorrent and ill-thought out but as the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson are taken out of politics, their dangerously misconceived views have lit a bonfire which we are now struggling to put out.  

New Israeli PM Bad For Human Rights

As Russia is discovering, any nation that invades and tried to steal land from another is rightly castigated but there is one nation that despite stealing land from its neighbours and militarily occupying them for 70 years, seems to get a free pass, Israel.
Considering that Israel was created following horrific persecution, that the same nation has been willingly imprisoning, murdering and occupying its neighbour for 7 decades doesn't seem to resonate with some, especially the American religious Churchy types who ask others to not only pray for Israel but demand that their Government continue to subside them in their efforts to wipe Palestine off the map.
One of the worst Israeli Prime Ministers has been Benjamin Netanyahu who to be sworn in as Israel's prime minister for the sixth time despite facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust by him and close political allies but as Israeli law allows a Prime Minister to remain in office until they are convicted of a crime, his swearing in will go ahead.
In the new extreme right wing Netanyahu government are people like Itamar Ben-Gvir who has been convicted of incitement to racism and urged police to shoot to kill during Palestinian protests against their brutal occupation and Bezalel Smotrich who will be the Defence Ministry and who advocates the annexation of the Occupied Territories.
Israel had been condemned in 45 resolutions by United Nations Human Rights Council, almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined, and they include condemnation of war crimes and crimes against humanity and there is a responsibility for the international community to take decisive action towards Israel taking a woefully long-overdue steps towards peace with their neighbour.
When a country acts badly, whether its Russia in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia in Yemen, UK and US in Iraq or Israel in Palestine, it should be condemned. When a country continually acts badly, it should be continually condemned and i don't buy the right to defend itself argument, every nation in the World has that right, including the Palestinians and your right to defend yourself is on shaky ground when you are defending yourself against the people you have been murdering and occupying for seven decades.
We should not meekly remain quiet for fear of being anti-Semite while Israel continues to violently colonize  Palestinian land in one of the greatest atrocities since the 2nd World War, and with Netanyahu at the helm, now is the time for the World to treat Israel as the Worlds Pariah.

Tories Literally Bad For Our Health

The UK is the 6th largest economy in the World, every penny the Government spends is a political decision, it is they who decide who gets what and how much so it is hard to accept that they cannot afford to fund the NHS when they are spending hundreds of billions on nuclear weapons and £50bn on a train-line which will get people from London to Birmingham 20 minutes faster.
The truth is that since the Conservatives took power in 2010, they have closed hospitals and deliberately underfunded the NHS, paying 1% instead of the usual 4% per annum required for it to run smoothly which is why it is in crisis today.
A shocking statistic from NHS England is that in 2010, 3,697 waited over four hours to be seen in an Accident and Emergency Ward, today, after 12 years of mismanagement, that figure is 130,528 and today my local Hospital was one of several who announced a Crisis and requested that people only go to A&E departments if they have 'a life-threatening emergency' and urged patients to use other services, including NHS 111, GPs and pharmacists.
It is a widely held belief, and one which i agree with, that the Conservative game has always been to run down the NHS to such a state that we end up crying out for it to be privatised so we can get a hospital bed.
Throw into the ring the tens of billion in cuts and the 44 hospitals and treatment centres that have been closed with a loss of 15,000 beds and it is no wonder the NHS isn't coping and a shocking 30,000 extra deaths per year are attributed to Government cuts.
It is said that Conservative Governments are bad for our health and now they literally are.

2022 Top Blog Posts

Well that was an interesting year dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the British Prime Minister changing three times and the Queen hanging up her Crown and no surprise that the top 5 Blog Posts on the blog this year were on those subjects.

Top post was Removing Russia From UN Non-Starter which was Ukrainian President Zelensky asking for the UN to remove Russia as a permanent member of the Security Council due to its invasion of his county and how that idea wasn't going to fly because the USA and UK we also permanent members and they have been invading nations left, right and centre and they hadn't been removed and China would probably block it anyway.

Second, Boris Bigging Up His Record In Government, was the vain attempt by Boris to salvage something from his time as Prime Minister after his own Party refused to work under him and forcibly removed him for being the Worst Prime Minster in living memory, little did they know that the person they replaced him with would shortly make him the second worst Prime Minister in living memory.  

Liz Truss's time as Prime Minister would have been funny if it hadn't have had such severe consequences, that she was in power for less time than the process to get her there and then when she did get her hand on the levers of power, she tanked the economy within 4 weeks and was forced to quit and it seemed to everyone but the Conservatives who supported her until it become obvious just how much damage she was doing and the third most viewed post, We Could Be In For A Very Bumpy Ride, explained how her ideological zeal could mean big problems. Turns out i was right, how about that!
 
Thankfully, America was rather quiet last year but big news was their draconian ruling on Abortions and the God 'N' Guns post explained how it couldn't happen here because there are two things very different this side of the Atlantic, we don't have madcap, bat-shit crazy law that allows people to own guns and God is something only the very few Brits have to worry about and it was the God bit over there that that made this atrocity happen.

The fifth most views post was Stop Googling, We Get One Day Off, which followed the death of the Queen and answered the question i got asked the most which was yes we do but just the one, the day of her funeral.

Special Guest Blogger Awards

Welcome to the award ceremony for the Special Guest Bloggers where genres are rewarded with, well nothing because the only criteria was to be dead and be famous and every genre has been represented by the 712 famous dead bloggers.

The views have been counted and the first award is for the most popular Pope which goes to the Pope who came up with the idea of Purgatory, Pope Eugenius IV.

Science has played a huge part in mankind moving on from the idea that the Sun went around the Earth and leeches attached to body parts was a medical miracle but the top scientist from all the science bods represented used only a cardboard box and a cat of undetermined life, Erwin Schrödinger.

Someone once said that If music be the food of love, then play on but this man stopped playing in 2004 when his prostate gave out on him, the most popular musician is Johnny Ramone.

There have been over 4,000 Gods since man first looked around and thought ‘How did all this get here?’ and invented something to explain it and the top God has come all the way from New Zealand, the Maori god of darkness, Whiro.    
  
Christianity may be the Johnny Come Lately of religious ideologies but it has taken the World by storm thanks to an adventure novel called the Bible and this award goes to the most popular Bible Character and in a very strong field this guy may only have had a small part in the book but forms the Ying to Gods Yang, please put your hands together for Satan.

There has been many Saints, probably more than the Catholic Church has scandals but the top Saint is the man who called himself 'the only Saint who ever who died of the squirts on the way to war', the man seated closest to the toilets, Saint Louis of France.

The next award is for top actor or actress and I am delighted to say Olivia Newton John, you are the one that we want.

Great Britain has had a Royal backside on the throne since the 9th Century but the most popular Royal backside was sat on one until September 2022 so give us a wave Queen Elizabeth II and then come up and get your Top Royal award.

The final award is for the top writer who also happens to be the most viewed special guest blogger of all time, a man who wrote about what he knew and what he knew was how to steal anything which wasn’t nailed down, Ladies and Gentleman, put your hands together and then put them on your valuables, the most viewed Special Guest Blogger, Mr Francois Villon.  

That concludes our award ceremony so thank you and congratulations to all our winners of the awards which were so popular that people were literally dying to get their hands on them. Boom Boom!!

Hanging On To Christmas

The wrapping from the presents is still in the kitchen bin but for some Christmas has gone, i know of some people who have taken down their Decoration already and walking around the Town Center this morning the Christmas Shop was packing its wares away and the Supermarket was moving all the Christmas
remnants to the front of the shop and sticking reduced stickers on them.
Always make me feels a bit sad once the lights and decorations come down, i leave mine up until i have been nagged enough to take them down, usually around mid January, but this week always feels a bit of a strange one because it's the lull after Christmas and the rush towards New Years and once Auld Lang Syne has been sung and the fresh calendar hung on the kitchen wall, it's all back to normal.
What does happen this week is the email/text from work asking for a review of the year and this year has been a crazy one, i did say we before that we certainly don't live in boring times but maybe next year we could do with a little less excitement.
Leaving aside the mess of British politics, it seems that this year is the one where Climate Change really went up a notch with extreme weather events aplenty including record temperatures and the now usual floods and storms, it may have shut up the Climate Change Deniers (unbelievably there are still a few of those dinosaurs around) but there is little satisfaction in saying 'we told you' when people are dying from them.
I do plan to keep Christmas going as long as possible, i am in no rush to get back to the Sunday night/Monday morning commute and changing Heart FM Xmas back to a normal radio station and having to worry about what ridiculously nasty thing the Conservative Party are now advocating, i am just going to watch the Hallmark Christmas Movies recorded onto the TIVO Box, keep singing along with the Festive songs on the radio, eating Quality Street and not answer my neighbours texts about getting his Good News Blog going until the last possible moment and real life comes crashing back in unavoidably. 

No Easy Way From The Earth To The Stars

The European Space Agency have announced their Class of 2022, a group of Astronauts who they hope will train for missions which include the construction of a new outpost that will orbit the moon, alongside missions to the lunar surface itself.
The selection process began in February 2021 and part of me thinks i would like to have thrown my hat into the ring although i knew full well that i wouldn't get past the first stage but i would be able to legitimately call myself a Space Cadet forever afterwards but what exactly does it take to be an astronaut?
The initial ESA intake was 23,000 European only applicants with the largest applications coming from Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands and the UK and the first sift was for people of a certain age range and held a couple of science degrees in science and one at Master’s level or above which cut the list of names down to 17,000.
From these it was whittled down to 1,550 who had 'relevant experience in a similar field' and these went on to the next stage which was classroom tests in Maths and Physics and psychometric and aptitude tests which took the number down to 400 who underwent more in-depth psychological evaluations and were observed playing group games as part of the assessment screening.  
The remaining 91 now underwent a medical evaluation designed to make sure the attendants held a very low risk of getting seriously ill on mission or having a major medical event in the next 15 years.
Finally, after 18 months, the five successful candidates for the Class of 22 were a Spanish Aeronautical engineer, a British Astronomer, a Belgian Neuroscientist, a Swiss Anaesthesiologist and another Brit, an Orthopaedic surgeon and there are also 11 'reserve' astronauts.
As i don't think a Cycling Proficiency Badge and a certificate for swimming 50m would have got me through the first sift then i was quite right to withhold my initial application but then the ESA saying is 'non est ad astra mollis e terris via' or there is no easy way from the Earth to the Stars and these guys have
definitely earned it.

Isn't The Solution Obvious?

Nobody likes to think they have been duped which is why many of the folk who voted for Brexit refuse to see what a car crash it has been and ignore the official data from the Bank of England, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which roundly concludes that Brexit has caused lasting damage to the UK economy as pre-warned it would.
Brexit has been blamed for the UK being the only economy in the G7 still below its pre-pandemic size, real wages falling by 2.9% following Brexit, food price rising by 6%, business investment flatlining since 2016, UK trade 15% lower than if we’d remained in the EU and the UK stil has to pay the £42.5bn Brexit divorce bill and rather than control immigration, last year saw a record 504,000 immigrants which is ironic given the racist undertone to much of the Brexit leavers decisions.
The upshot of 'controlling immigration' is that Britain lost healthcare workers, food rotted unpicked in the fields as continental seasonal workers stayed away and the Government had to make a plea for the foreign delivery drivers who had left the country to come back as shop shelves sat unrefilled.
Scottish independence numbers are edging up and Northern Ireland have made noises about unifying with Ireland so the United Kingdom could be banished to the History Books along with the names Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.
Shamefully, the Labour Party are afraid to promise we would rejoinin the EU Single market or Customs Area and are talking about how to make Brexit work which ignores that the the only real solution is to rejoin the EU as a priority but it seems that the Brexit experiment still has some way to go and havoc to wreak before someone in power is brave enough to admit that it was all a disaster and our destiny and future prosperity lie's with Europe and going back into the worlds largest single market made up of our nearest neighbours is economically obvious, even to the most hard of thinking Brexit supporter.

It's Christmas!!!

Hey, it’s Christmas, what are you doing reading a blog?
I’m not posting anything today, i'm extremely busy sitting on the sofa in my Christmas pyjama's drinking sherry and eating chocolate for breakfast, opening badly wrapped presents from family and trying to find a subtle way of finding out whether they kept the receipt and watching Hallmark Christmas Movies and something with Ant and Dec in.
I might stop for food and toilet breaks, then again i might not, i will play that by ear and whether i am laying on the sofa in a food/alcohol induced coma at the time.
Regardless of my sobriety and hygiene over the Festive period, i’ll be back Boxing Day as soon as i have returned from the shops where i have tried my best to keep a straight face while i explain how this broken thing in my hand was like that when i got it and could i have store credit to the same value or the money back please.
Until then, turn off the computer and have a great day and in the words of Mr Shakin' Stevens, Merry Christmas everyone.

Right Wing Santa

It has always been assumed that because people actually like and look forward to seeing Father Christmas, he is therefore left wing but as usual the right wing have tried to claim him which is ridiculous but then that is par for the course for them but as it is the time of the year to be kind to those less fortunate than ourselves, let's give them a hearing before we laugh hysterically and dismiss them as utter numptys.
As a straight, white, older male it would appear that Father Christmas fits the right wing profile perfectly and built his business himself in the North Pole – a tax haven with a zero percent tax rate so hardly a sign of someone who believes paying his 'fair share'.
He is single handedly responsible for the surge of consumerism every December which makes him a friend of big corporations and as he hands out coal, a friend to the Fossil Fuel industry and as he is known to force it on small children, bringing through the next generation.
Taking all that into account they could be on to something throw in the fact that he also only works one day a year, i'm beginning to think that he is not only a right winger, but a Conservative Party Minister!

Santa Baby It's Cold Outside

The Heart FM Xmas radio station began in September and i have been singing along to various baubles being jangled and halls being decked for months now but with just a few days to go before Christmas, i am getting weary of a few Christmas songs, Noddy hollering 'IT'S CHRISTMAS' kinda loses its appeal on the 570th hearing  but there are two songs which i have never liked from the get go, 'Santa Baby' and 'Baby, It's Cold Outside'.
Thankfully It's Cold Outside doesn't get played that often these days due to the creepy lyrics about a woman saying no to sleeping over multiple times while a man persistently tries to persuade her using the weather conditions as an excuse like a meteorological version of Harvey Weinstein.
Santa Baby though still gets a regular airing despite a YouGov poll siding with me that it tops the poll of the least favorite Christmas song with 32% of Christmas Song listeners who expressed a preference said it sucked candy canes.
Second least liked was 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' which strangely enough i hardly ever hear and then it was 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus' and Paul McCartney's Christmastime won't be quite so Wonderful when he finds out 24% of listeners put his Festive offering 4th and then the top five is rounded out by the aforementioned advocate of date rape when it's cold outside.
The least disliked song (therefore sort of making it the most liked) was Jingle Bells because what we all know what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh in the snow although if you see a man offering you just another drink because its cold out there then steer clear as his intentions may not be hounourable.

All Because The Lady Loves Beanies Coffee

Something i heard a lot during my career is 'I don't watch the news anymore because it's so depressing' and i agree, a lot of the stuff in the news is wars, corruption, murders and lot's of other stuff that makes you just want to put your head in your hands and sigh for the stupid human race but it's not all awful, it's just that the worse things land and with the loudest thud.
I did consider an online 'Good News Newspaper' a while ago but it never got past the consideration stage for the same reason that art lessons, learning another language or a computer course never got past the 'that would be good' stage either, i couldn't be bothered.      
Since the Famous Dead People series ended, my co-writing friend has been loudly wondering what our next project should be and i just sort of hmmm'd and kept digging out the purple ones from the Quality Street tin and last night he text me with an idea which did have some merit, a Good News Online Newspaper.
As both of us have the computer skills of a house brick we went from creating an online newspaper to a blog and from him paying me a Billion Gazillion Pounds and everything mentioned in the Santa Baby Christmas Song to him keeping me in Beanies Flavoured Coffee if he found the stories and did all the posting bit and i wrote them up with all proceeds (if Newstex or any of those come onboard) to go to Charity.
Negotiations are still ongoing, the convertible, yacht and decorations from Tiffany's are proving a bit of a sticking point as is whether i really want to add another writing obligation to my day but i must admit i am interested as i also sometimes forget that admist all the bad, selfish people, there are others who do selfless, altruistic things who should recognised and besides, free Beanies Coffee...

Christmas In Secular UK

Britain has never been that religious a country with under 1% attending Church with any regularity, Tony Blair summed it up a while back where he said that he kept his religious beliefs hidden because otherwise the British people would think he was a nutter. Obviously he was fine with us thinking he was a warmongering liar but a nutter with belief in God and the Baby Jesus, nope, keep that bit quiet.
As a largely secular nation, the idea of Jesus at Christmas has been pushed firmly behind Father Christmas and Snowmen which is quite a decent feat because Christ is the first part of the name of the season but us Brits has managed to remove the religious element from it magnificently.  
Despite finding that whole kid born in a stable story a little unconvincing, we do occasionally see a nativity scene somewhere but they are a rare sight and Greggs got in trouble for an advert a few years ago by having three wise men sat around a sausage roll in a manger, apparently the few religious people left rattled their rosary beads in protest that it was mocking their religious beliefs or something forcing the bakers to sniff out an apology that they were sorry to have caused any offence etc etc
I always take the view that unless you was brain-washed into the religion thing as a child and you looked at all the evidence for Christianity and decided it convinced you then you really should look a bit harder so as an atheist i guess celebrating Christmas makes the majority of us who don't spend our Sundays sat on
a wooden bench in a draughty Church all hypocrites and i guess to some degree it does.
That said i do pity the religious folk, mainly the younger ones who are dragged into it by Bible bashing parents as they have no chance, the seed is sown for them before they even have chance to weigh things up for themselves so if you get the usual question of why celebrate Christmas if you don't believe it then you can either pity them for not being as clever as us, launch into a tirade that Christmas was a pagan festival that the Christians stole or say that you are celebrating the birth of one of the most influential people in the history of mankind who was born on December 25th, only Sir Isaac Newton was real.

Brian May Explains Nuclear Fusion

Thursday morning and i was stood swearing at the coffee machine when my boss came up and said 'Ah Lucy, could you get hold of one of your science bod's and have a bit of a chat to find out about this Nuclear Fusion thingy'.
'No Problem' i said and went back to threatening the machine with smashing its face in with a chair but by the time i got back to my desk, gossiped about Nigel from Accountants and ate my croissant it was mid-morning and the British Science Association was at their Christmas meal and the guy's at the British Journal for the History of Science wasn't answering their phones so in desperation i flitted through my phone looking for a celebrity with a science degree who could help me before my boss came back.
My usual go to is Brian Cox for anything science nerdy but he was up a mountain in Peru and the voicemail of his TV science partner, Dara Ó Briain, said he was unavailable due to a Guinness related incident so i considered other science degree holders such as Dexter Holland of the Offspring, comedian Harry Hill, Actors Dolph Lundgren and Lisa Kudrow and even Rowan Atkinson but decided to give Brian May a call who was only too happy to oblige.
'So Brian' i began, 'Tell me about Nuclear Fusion. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?'
'The nuclear reaction that combines two atoms to create one or more new atoms with slightly less total mass? he asked, 'where the difference in mass is released as energy, as described by Einstein's famous equation, E = mc^2 , where energy equals mass times the speed of light squared'?
'Feck knows' i thought but said 'That's it, so what's happened with it?
Apparently American scientists shot 192 lasers at a pellet of hydrogen which produced X-rays that heated and compress the fuel pellet to about 20 times the density of lead and to more than 100 times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
'Wow, i bet they said Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here'
'Hmm, probably, but it released more energy than the fusion process to deliver it'
'Sounds very interesting' i lied,' 'i can see why that would sends shivers down your spine, body's aching all the time so it's kinda like a shooting star leaping through the sky like a tiger defying the laws of gravity, burnin' through the sky, and this is a big deal because...'?
'Well Nuclear Fusion energy is the holy grail of energy production, they have been trying to accomplish it for decades and is the first steps towards a viable energy source which doesn't cause pollution'.
'Since Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, magnificoo. So they've paid their dues time after time, made bad mistakes and had their share of sand kicked in their face but they've come through so to speak?
'I guess' he replied then said he really had to go as he had some badger to go see so i said i understood that he was busy and had just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here and thanked him for his time.
So there you have it, Nuclear Fusion, now watch some warmongering tosser in Moscow, Washington or London turn it into an even more powerful bomb.

Maybe Later Marcus, Let me Sleep

Marcus Aurelius was the philosopher King of Rome and would write advice to himself which became the famous 'Meditations' philosophy book and i have a copy and it does have some great advice such as 'Focus on what you can do, and not what you can't. There is nothing you can do about the past or future, you can only influence the present' and my present currently includes a hangover of Biblical proportions thanks to the works Christmas Party yesterday afternoon, evening and night.
Luckily Mr Aurelius does have a jaunty little antidote for dragging yourself out of bed in the morning although cocktails hadn't been invented in 2BC so i feel justified in saying Thanks Marcus, now sod off and let me sleep in peace until i feel human again.  
The Roman Emperor's words are that: 'In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being.
to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world not to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?'
Firstly, Marcus lived in balmy and humid Rome, he didn't wake up with a tounge which felt like it was wearing a carpet and see an inch of frost on his window-sill and face taking half hour to put on enough layers to make it almost impossible to walk just to pop down to the supermarket for milk and secondly, he may have thought differently if he had necked enough alcohol to float a small Russian battleship the afternoon, evening and night before and rolled in at some ungodly hour and fall unconscious on the bed while trying to unbuckle his shoes.
In those circumstances yep, the laying in bed-clothes keeping myself warm looks pretty damned inviting although at some point i do plan to read his book to see what he says about deleting photographs from friends facebook pages because i seem to recall a table top, a Karaoke version of Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' and the words 'Are you OK as that was quite a tumble'.

TESLA Shares And Licking Rocks

I have been told continually that i need to put something in place to keep me in my dotage and although i now have a work place pension, it won't be enough to keep me in the style to which i have become accustomed when the calendar ticks over to 2036 and i receive my State Pension so i did look at some other means in which to avoid living in a tent licking moss off rocks to survive but luckily i was too lazy to do anything any it.
Buying shares was one of the things suggested by a good friend who knows about these things and it was suggested i look at some of the 'Green' utility providers or Social Media platforms and i did spend a few minutes considering Tesla until i was distracted by a biscuit or something frivolous and forgot all about it.
Now i have a love/hate relationship with Elon Musk, the man is obviously a bell-end of enormous magnitude but Space X and Electric Cars is something i fully support so i thought i could hold my nose, ignore him but back his companies by handing him my dosh for which he would hand even more back to me in 14 years time but this was before he bought Twitter and made an enourmous nosh up of it.   
Back when i looked at the TESLA shares 6 months ago the shares were priced at $215 USD, rising to $309 in August but last week they were priced at $169 which resulted in a voicemail saying this is the ideal time to 'BUY BUY BUY' to which i replied 'WHY WHY WHY, the shares are on their way down, Musk messed up so why buy them now'?
Apparently, now is the best time precisely because Musk messed up but to my mind, because Musk made such a balls up of things is precisely why i should keep my money safely tucked up in a savings account earning 0.000001% interest annually.
What's to say he won't mess up with TESLA Cars or SPACE X and $169 per share will be a long forgotten memory, the man has proved he is liable to do moronic things and in the six months since i looked, today i would be $46 down on each share which is the opposite of doing something positive for my pension or rather, doing something which will ensure i will be looking for the mossiest rocks.

Nothing But Space, Man

If you happen to find yourself in the Pacific Ocean about 5.40pm this afternoon, that thing you see coming at you at 25,000 mph would be the Artemis 1's Orion Capsule which is due to splash down at the end of its 4 week jaunt around the Moon.
If all goes according to plan, the heat shield will shrug off the 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit heat on its re-entry and bob around in the Ocean until a US Navy ship comes to pick it up and hand it over to scientists to decide whether the equipment stood up well enough to send people up in it next time, currently penciled in for May 2024.
While Artemis 1 was a test, Artemis 2 plans to send astronauts around the moon in 2024 and if that all goes well its full steam ahead for Artemis 3 in 2025 and actually landing humans on the Lunar surface, the first steps towards building a lunar research base and springboard for other missions including Mars.
All very exciting for us Space geeks and something which us humans should have done a long time ago, that we haven't been back leaving footprints in the Moon dust since 1972 is a terrible indictment on us humans, but the thing i am most excited about is the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM.
This involves somehow either grabbing or deflecting an asteroid (the details are fuzzy) and placing it in orbit around the Moon. Phase one was the recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) where scientists rammed a satellite into the Dimorphos Asteroid to see if they could alter its orbit, which it did, so now they are deciding on which of the four candidate Asteroids it is currently eyeing up has the most favourable velocity, orbit, size and spin to safely deflect our way because if you are going to fling a massive space boulder our way you need to be sure it doesn't go wrong and you find yourself saying sorry into the smoking hole where Switzerland used to be.  
The date for becoming the owners of a new pet Asteroid is also 2025 so as long as we haven't blown our stupid selves up with a nuclear war by then, 2025 could be a very exciting time for Space fans.

England, Plucky Losers

See, told ya, we were plucky losers against the French and as much as i hated the result, it was an exciting game with plenty to get us jumping and down in our seats and inevitably it ended with a penalty sailing far over the bar.
I was asked what would i prefer, England win the World Cup or my team Arsenal win the Premier League which i dodged answering and as an Arsenal fan it would be easy to make fun of Harry Kane who missed the spot kick but whether it's the Christmas Decorations in my eyeline or it being the season of Goodwill to all men, but i can't find it in myself to blame the Tottenham striker.
It was always going to be a problem when the same person takes a second penalty in a game, do they go the same way or try to go the opposite side or as Harry did, hit it that bit harder to make sure which leads to them overthinking it and someone in a neighbouring country finding an official FIFA Football in their garden.
With England out the problem us England fans now have is to decide who of the remaining four teams, Argentina, Croatia, France or Morocco, we are now backing but it's easy for me, Vive la France!!
Morocco have done brilliantly to get to the Semi-Finals and to only concede one goal, and that was an own goal, while knocking out established teams like Belgium, Spain and Portugal deserves applause but i don't want to see them win it and as much as i admire Messi, Argentina are the sort of team who could start a fight in an empty room so i'm hoping the other European nation, Croatia, send them back home and it's them lining up on the 18th December against the team with the World's best National Anthem, the La Marseillaise.
I do like the French National Anthem, it's very bouncy and tuneful which is one very shallow reason i'm backing our European Neighbours while another is the football cliche that we can then say we lost to the winners and therefore the Best team in the World.  
I hope the team, and Harry Kane especially, doesn't feel too bad because he, and the rest did well against the World Champions but that said i am sure that normal service will resume after the Premier League starts again on Boxing Day and i will be hoping Harry Kane sends more shots into orbit and Arsenal remain top of the League until the end of May.

Blame The Government, Not The Strikers

 
With regards to the slew of strikes happening at the moment, the Government plan seems to be refuse to negotiate and let the strikes happen and the public will be annoyed that the Nurses, firefighters, public servants, railworkers and all the rest will be under pressure to go back to work with nothing changed although the Unions are doing their damnedest to make sure the public know that it isn't them refusing to negotiate.
The Royal College of Nurses yesterday said that they have asked 5 times for negotiations with the Health Minister to avoid strike action who turned up to two of them and refused to actually do any negotiating, just said pay wasn't up for discussion and left again.
All the Unions are saying the same thing so it must be a strategy of the Government to turn up so they can say they turned up and then leave again and say well we did go but nothing was agreed and then tacitly imply that it was the Unions fault, hence the much repeated quote of costing the public an additional £1,000 each if they gave in to the Unions demands, a claim that every economist has dismissed as a figure plucked out of thin air and not even in the same ball park as accurate.
With the latest polls showing every strike in every department has over 50% public support, the Government are hoping that this will fall once the strikes actually happen which is why they are so keen to let them happen and hope that nobody remembers that the Conservatives are the reason who so much is failing due to being under funded for the period they have been in power.
It was they who froze the pay of public and Civil servants for a decade under their austerity measures, they who raised the NHS Budget by 1% each year instead of the acknowledged 4% it took to keep it running on parity and they who committed economic suicide by leaving the EU and shaving 4% off GDP and initially backed the disastrous right wing ideology of Liz Truss who tanked the economy within a few weeks.
Every decision is political and they are making a political decision to try and shift the blame away from 11% Interest Rates, the worst performing economy in the G20 and the cost of living crisis which will literally see people die so don't let them off the hook because they are 100% to blame for the state of the nation, and the state of the nation is currently appallingly abhorrent. 

Know Your Place England

England in the World Cup Quarter Finals and we all know how this will go because we have been here before and it ends with the plucky English players trudging off the field leaving the celebrating opposition to jump around excitedly but hang on, England actually think they not only have a chance of beating the reigning World Champions France but winning the whole shooting match.
Harry Maguire has only gone and said the squad has the belief that they can win the footballing tournament which doesn't seem a very English attitude which is of a more pessimistic mindset that we will lose on penalties and in Garth Southgate we have a manager who knows all about that, his penalty at Euro '96 is currently still in orbit somewhere as they did the job of losing in a penalty shootout against Germany.
England fans know our place in the world’s game and we fully expect the defending champions to put us back in our place on Saturday night as Kylian Mbappé, Oliver Giroud and the rest of Les Bleus put another World Cup to bed for us.  
Trying to win the World Cup indeed! England, know your place in the football hierarchy which is plucky losers!

Enough Already

I'm no Royalist, i really could not give a flying hoot about any of them so i have no intention of paying too much attention to the the drama about Harry and Meghan latest outburst which i'm sure has already been covered in one of the other many interviews they have given.
For a couple who gave up the Royal Life and left the UK for their privacy, they sure do enjoy talking about it a lot but i guess they need the money as Harry was cut off financially from the Royal Family when he decided to step back from his official duties and estimates put him down to his last £60 million
and we are in the midst of a cost of living crisis after all.
From the snippets i have been unable to avoid hearing, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's beef with the Royal's is that they never protected them from the racist's inside Buckingham Palace but Philip was his Grandfather so not that easy to avoid but we have recently found out that royal aide, Lady Susan Hussey, was also not averse to a bit of racism after refusing to acceopt that a person can be both Black and British and Hussey was the lady tasked with bringing Meghan into the Royal fold which could answer the question of who was kit who was so keen to know what colour the baby Meghan was carrying was going to be.
Piers Morgan has been suspiciously quiet on the subject, maybe he is too busy flouncing off set somewhere after being embarassed by another weatherman for his inane views on the Royal's but it does give credence to their previous utburst that the Royals and their staff refused to accept Meghan because she wasn't white enough for them.
I would have more sympathy with the pair if their privacy to live a quiet life didn't infringe upon my own to not see them on the TV and in the newspapers all the time but it it hastens in the end of the overly-privileged family then it's worth it.

EDITED POST: Making (deleted) Laugh

This post from 2016 was edited because following a complaint they discovered 6 years later that it violates Blogger community guidelines for hate speech. It has been recommended that i republish with content which now adheres to their guidelines. So i have so even the most humourless <deleted> cannot be offended.

If we need a solution to anything, it seem that the music world is where we should be turning which is why we had Bono at the American Senate subcommittee on Capitol Hill and his suggestion for dealing with <deleted> is to send in the clowns.
Bono suggested that comedians should be sent to counter <deleted> stressing that: 'If you laugh at them it takes away their power' and then went on to suggest Amy Schumer, Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen should be deployed to <deleted>.
Rather than shouting 'Security!!' at the top of their lungs, Senators said that it was one of the things that they have already considered.
Firstly why was Bono asked to attend a Senate sub-comittee anyway and did the Americans seriously think the best way to save civilians from being killed and make the <deleted> drop their weapons was a few showings of Borat?
What if Bono has a point though, after all we have tried arming them, disarming them, supporting them and then trying to blow them up and nothing has worked so far so hey , <deleted>, put down that rocket launcher, I've got a joke for you!

What do you call a <deleted>? <deleted>
Have you heard about <deleted>? They <deleted>
Anonymous have <deleted>. Ironic that they’re <deleted>
Did you hear about the <deleted>? He was a <deleted>.
What do you call a <deleted>? <deleted>.
What do <deleted>? <deleted>.
What do you call a <deleted?? <deleted>
What do you call an <deleted>? <deleted>.

Thank you very much, i'm here all week (possibly)

Trump's Back, And This Time It's Farcical

As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, sulk like a toddler and baselessly claim that an election was stolen from you and then try, try again which is advice that Donald Trump has taken as the third fattest President ever to haul his massive carcass behind the White House desk is making another attempt to avoid going to prison for another four years.
For a man who tried to make his reputation as a brilliant businessman, five bankruptcies and now a tax fraud ruling against him tends to make me think that he wasn't such a hotshot in the boardroom but maybe his skill-set lay elsewhere.
As his Presidency ended with America sitting not so proudly at the top nation for Covid deaths and suggested drinking bleach as a cure then it wasn't caring for his own people and he took a $19.9 trillion national debt when he took the Presidency and increased it to $27 trillion when he left office so he wasn't any great shakes at national economics either but as his weight went from a hefty 16.9 stone (244 pounds) at the start of his Presidency to a morbidly obese 17.4 stone (244 pounds) when his morbidly dense supporters rioted 4 years later, he was good for the profits of fast food outlets as well as spray tan vendors so let's go with them.
I am hearing that even amongst Republican's and the American right-wing (who truth be told are not going to trouble the MENSA membership committee anytime soon) the chubby former President is losing favour because they have a new hero in Ron DeSantis who by all accounts is Trump without the lard or love of porn stars behind his wife's back.
I assume the draw of the Presidency for Trump is more to do with the immunity from prosecution, especially as he is facing a raft of court cases but it is hard to decipher what the American electorate will do, i thought after his misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan then George W Bush would be out on his ear but they re-elected him in 2004 so it is all to play for and we elected Boris Johnson over here so being an awful person is not the disadvantage it used to be to a politician.
If that malfunction did occur over there and Trump is able to call himself Mr President again then Americans may as well confess they are too terminally stupid to make use of their nation, offer all their resources at a fire-sale discount and await the inevitable split into North USA and South USA after the Civil War.

Snow!!!!

Courtesy of an icy blast direct from the Arctic, temperatures are set to plunge in the UK with them barely dragging themselves above zero during the day and -11 at night and don't say it too loudly but the weathermen are saying snow is expected all over our green and pleasant land, even as far south as the coast where i am sat today wearing the thickest jumper in my wardrobe.
The words 'White Christmas' have yet to be uttered but where snow on the South Coast is usually as likely as finding a bacon sandwich in a synagogue, it is a possibility that we may well get a sprinkling this year and as i have spent the best part of the last 4 weeks up to my knees in the stuff, i can offer a few words of advice to my fellow southerners about the mistakes i made when it comes to the White Stuff.  
Firstly, snow is very cold. Duh, obviously Lucy you may think but it is easy to forget when you are out in the stuff and you pick up a snowball to lob at unsuspected spouses or brothers/sisters and before you know it you have rolled up a dozen and your hands are numb and going a funny blue colour.
Most important is to remember that snow is pretty heavy so aim that snowball a bit higher for a good head shot.
Secondly, making a snowman is not as easy as it looks on the TV, you have to start small and roll it around but as it grows it gets heavy and hard to push around and as Snowmen insist on having a head as well as a body, that's two big balls of snow so don't be too ambitious, i left plenty of half formed snowmen in my wake because hubby had naffed off back inside to warm up and i wasn't strong enough to lift the head up onto the body.
Snow is just frozen water and when it reverts back to it's liquid form, you will get wet so waterproofs are a good idea as are sunglasses and sunblock as snowburn is an actual thing, who'd have thought? Not me obviously.
The best thing for icy pathways is salt or even cat litter but if you see an icy patch and are unable to avoid it, slide your feet slowly rather than step as normal as nothing is as ungracious or as embarrassing as seeing your legs zipping above your head in a busy street. Probably sensible shoes also help, something with a bit of grip anyway.
Sledding and snowboarding is great fun right up until a tree refuses to shift out of the way so make sure that you have a clear run and not too steep because you know, gravity, which is also a problem on frozen lakes, rivers and ponds which may look thicker than they actually are and splashing around in freezing cold water in minus temperatures isn't particularly good for your health.
Finally, if you are not used to snow then whatever you do, don't look out the window and thing Brr, too cold to go outside, grab a coat, your gloves and a bobble hat and go outside and be a kid again because like a truth from a politician, it don't happen very often so make the most of it.

Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas And Santa Claus

Many people today think that Father Christmas is just the British name for Santa Claus who is just a modern version of Saint Nicholas. Whilst it is true that Father Christmas, St Nicholas and Santa are considered virtually the same today, the jolly old man who sneaks into our houses every 25 December began as very different people entirely.

 

FATHER CHRISTMAS

This guy started out about 2BC as the Norse God Odin who was one of the principal gods in Norse mythology who would take on the character of the mid-winter Jul or Father Time wearing a long, green hooded cloak and a wreath of holly, ivy or mistletoe and would visit the Earth riding his eight-legged horse Sleipnir and give gifts to the good placed into shoes left by the chimney and punishments to the bad.
When the Vikings invaded Britain they brought their own midwinter traditions with them and introduced the concept of the Nordic Father Time, also known as King Frost or King Winter and the tradition of leaving out food and drink for his visit as it was thought that by being kind to him, the home owners would get something good in return such as a milder winter.
Father Time evolved into Sir Christëmas after the Church shoehorned in their beliefs into the British mid-winter celebrations by saying that the associated
merrymaking, drinking and singing was Sir Christëmas announcing the news of the birth of Christ on December 25th.
St. Nicholas didn't 'arrive' in Britain until after the Norman invasion, and when he did arrive his story was quickly absorbed into the legend of Father Christmas until the Puritans banned Christmas but after it was revived a decade later, the Christmas Adult celebrations of Father Christmas encouraging feasting, drinking and games were revived but the Victorians wanted to make Christmas more family friendly so they revived the folkloric Sir Christëmas into a new kind of old man to represent it, Father Christmas, who would bring presents to well behaved Children.
Shops and stores keen to improve sales and the depiction of Father Christmas as the 'Ghost of Christmas Present' by Charles Dickens with his green cloak and holly wreath crown helped to assimilate the jolly, gift bringing Father Christmas into society and associated with distributing gifts to the children.

SAINT NICHOLAS

The tradition of the Nordic style Odin mid-winter festival was strong throughout Europe and in the Netherlands the Church saw the opportunity to combine the traditional yule figure Odin into their own 4th-century Greek bishop from Myra, Saint Nicholas, (SinterKlaas in the Dutch language) and the Sinterklaasfeest arose where money and present was put into shoes based on the tale of the Saint who threw bags of gold down the chimney which landed in the stockings which were drying by the fire of three girls whose father was due to sell them into prostitution.
St Nicholas's fame spread throughout medieval Europe and was known as the Christ Child, das Christkindl in Germany, and impersonators dressed with white hair and a long, full beard in a long red cape wearing a red mitre and ruby ring, while holding a gold-coloured shepherd's staff with a curled top sat on a white horse which possessed the magical power to walk over rooftops, began making an appearance and children would put their shoes next to the chimney of the coal stove or fireplace, with a carrot or some hay in it for Sinterklaas's horse, and would find some presents in their shoes the next day, thrown down the chimney.
The Saint was accompanied by a demon called Krampus who would take away naughty children and throw them into a sack to take away and eat them and when the German and Dutch immigrants arrived in the New World in the 17th century, they brought the Sinterklaas festivities with them to their colonies and the names Christkindle and Sinterklaas slowly became anglicized to Kris Kringle and Santa Claus and mixed with the British Father Christmas.

SANTA CLAUS

While Sinterklaas travelled by Horse, the New World Santa Claus used a reindeer-drawn sleigh which, due to the magical reindeer that pulled it, was able to fly through the air and new layers were added to the legend including his base at the North Pole and an updated look which merged him with the British Victorian era Father Christmas which lost the mitre and crook to be replaced with a red cloak and hat with white fur trim and a black belt who climbed down the chimneys to place toys and sweets in stockings.
The single reindeer became eight after the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (also known as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas) by Clement C. Moore, introduced eight reindeer which pulled Santa's Sleigh and named them Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem (later changed to Donner and Blitzen) and Rudolph with his bright red nose came along in 1934.
The New Look caught on for the 'new' modern Santa Claus and this image and the traditions became the default and made it's way back across the Atlantic to Europe although in Britain he is still Father Christmas, in Europe Sinterklaas, and in other places Santa Claus, the three have all became essentially the same person although their origins are of three very different people all originating from the present leaving, white bearded Norse God Odin.

A Racist Is A Racist Regardless Of Age

 
Following royal aide, 83 year old Lady Susan Hussey racist questioning of where a black lady invited to Buckingham Palace 'really came from', i have been wondered at what age it is alright to become a raging racist because there does seem to be a few people who are excusing her prejudiced ramblings as the result of her being an elderly lady.
As if it simply did not compute that someone can be Black and British at the same time, Lady Hussey's questions were 'Where are you From?', then 'You must know where you're from' to 'What Nationality are you?' then 'Where do you really come from' and 'Where do your people come from?' to finally 'When did you first come here?'.  
Quite rightly the 83 year old has been pilloried by all sides and pensioned off from her role as a Royal Aide but some of those on the right seem to want to wave it away as a generation thing and remember that not all right wingers are racists, but all the racists are on the right wing and they are of all ages and that is
important when it comes to impotently batting away accusations of racism.
Under 16 and the racist mumblings are from someone 'Too Young to Understand' and up to 25 they are dismissed as 'A Youthful mistake' and then up to approximately 65 they are 'listening and learning from their mistakes' and then after retirement age they are 'from a different generation' which pretty much covers their whole life of racist blather.
Buckingham Palace said it took the incident 'extremely seriously' and called the comments 'unacceptable and deeply regrettable' although it is unlikely that her views of black people not being British only just appeared this month, it must have been a deeply held view which has only just been exposed now.
Just as people who begin a sentence with 'I'm not a racist but...' and then go on to say something offensively racist, these views are thankfully becoming pushed to the edges and it is only the hardcore morons who persist in this kind of thinking although there are still too many of them around and worse, when they do open their stupid mouth, there are some who are willing to excuse it for whatever reason and not shout them down for the racist idiots they are, regardless of age.

The Grimest Of December Advent Calendars

Liz Truss will go down as one of the worst British Prime Ministers in living memory and when you bear in mind that living memory includes Boris Johnson then that is no mean feat but since 2010 and David Cameron landing his size nines on the Downing Street doorstep, then the Conservatives have been terrible in almost everything they have done, the largest network food banks in the UK, the Trussell Trust, had 35 food banks handing out food parcels in 2010 and at the end of 2021 operated 1400 with a further 1,172 independent food banks which is an alarming stat in the 6th richest nation in the world.
The jewel in the British crown was always our NHS but serious underfunding every year since the Conservatives got into power and the barking insanity which was Brexit and Liz Truss right wing ideological economic disaster now means that the National Health Service is in the worst state it has ever been although to my mind that has always been the Conservative plan in preparation for Privatising it.
Along with the NHS, many of our institutions are failing which is why we are facing a December of strikes, an appalling advent calendar of a strike every day throughout the month from Nurses, Junior Doctors, the Rail Industry, Bus Drivers, National Highways employees, Airport baggage handlers, Teachers, Driving examiners, Border Force staff, DVLA employees, delivery drivers and brewers.
Political incompetence, economic ineptitude and a grotesque indifference to the people they ruled over for over a decade has led us to where we are today and Britain not only deserves better, it should be taken for granted that our Government, and it is worth repeating we are the 6th richest nation on the planet, would   
not be in a situation where it's citizens are literally facing a question of heating or eating.
With such a huge poll lead, it is expected Labour and Keir Starmer will take over the reins in 2024 and we can only hope that they get the ship off the rocks that the ideological Conservatives has planted us so if nothing else, we have discovered what a right wing ideology looks like and it looks very much like a huge queue for food parcels, protests and large swathes of the country downing tools to demand better pay and conditions.

Which Country Contributed Most To Christmas?

Chances are, everyone has a favourite part of Christmas and it usually includes stuffing your face with mince pies, dishing out hundreds of Christmas cards or watching the Hallmark Christmas Channel and many of our traditions are still going strong today despite being many hundreds of year old.
The Germans do like to think that they came up with Christmas or rather the traditions around it but then us English say the same thing so which nation has contributed the most to the Christmas traditions we do each year?

Advent Calendar (German) These began when a German, Gerhard Lang, or more specifically, Gerhard Lang’s mum, attached twenty-four cookies onto a square of cardboard for the young Gerhard to scoff in the days leading up to the festive season and thanked her by nicking her idea and manufacturing it but introduced the concept of concealing pictures hidden behind little closed doors so when you open the cardboard doors and look at the suspicious-looking bits of whiteish, year-old chocolate lurking there, blame the Germans.

Boxing Day (British) Boxing Day isn't celebrated everywhere but it is a British invention and it is actually about boxes full of money, gifts or food which is what the Lords would give to their servants to take home to their families on their day off the day after the celebrations. Well done us Brits.

Christmas Cards (British) The first card showed a whole family knocking back wine but this British invention was a bit weird to start with, the original cards didn't have snowmen or pleasant wintry scenes, they showed children riding giant bats, dead robins, and a bloody battle between sword-wielding insects.

Christmas Crackers (British) Us Brits again, a sweet maker Tom Smith sat by a crackling log fire and imagined how fun it would be if his wrapped sweets made the same sound when opened so that what he did and invented the Christmas Cracker full of his own sweets. The naff trinkets were added later.

Christmas Movies (British) A hundred years before Hallmark and Candace Cameron Bure who seems to be in most of them, was George Albert Smith who in 1898 made the 90 second long 'Santa Claus' film with two children eagerly awaiting Father Christmas but fall asleep and miss him coming down the chimney. It's not as gripping as it sounds but it was the first Christmas Movie and set in motion spending December watching a woman return to her town of birth and falling for the hunky handyman before giving up her high powered job in the city for him, like you do.

Christmas Pudding (British) This was a British delicacy called frumenty which included mutton and beef mixed with raisins and currants, spices and wine which became known as Plum Pudding with less meat and more assorted dried fruits and coins stirred into the mix and then drenched in brandy and set alight before serving and Uncle George choking on the hidden money inside.

Carol Singers (British) We called it Wassailing and involved groups of people singing and being handed gifts, money and drink for their efforts so remember to thank us next time you get some spotty herbert knocking your door and then singing the first line of We Wish You A Merry Christmas and then holding their hand out for a quid.
 
Christmas Tree (German) During the time of the winter solstice, the Scandinavians would decorated the evergreen trees branches with small carvings of the gods and food in the hope of scaring away evil spirits and would bring branches and sprigs of holly, bay, laurel, ivy and mistletoe into their homes but the Germans went one better and dragged a whole tree into their homes so German's, when we step on pine needles in our barefeet this one is on you.

December 25th (Romans) Obviously there was a December 25th long before the Christians pasted their guy into a pagan mid-winter festival and most people know that Saturnalia was a Roman festival celebrating their God Saturn but as there is no mention anywhere in the Bible of when Jesus was born, Pope Julius I convenintly tagged Jesus's Birthday onto the end of the Festival and December 25th became his Birthday which the Christians loved because it meant they could join in the drinking and groping the servants with the rest of the Roman's.

Elf's (Scandinavian) We have the Scandinavians to thank for these Christmas stalwart's, the Elf or Nisse were equipped with magical powers and looked like a  short and red pointy hat wearing garden gnome who lived in the stables and barns of the homestead, guarding the property and those dwelling within but if you didn't respect them, they would create mischief around your house.

Father Christmas (Scandinavian)) He breaks into our houses every year to the delight of good children everywhere but he didn't start out delivering presents to kids, he began life as the Norse God Odin riding his eight-legged horse Sleipnir across the midwinter night's sky, delivering gifts to those down below who would leave out food and drink for him as a sacrifice to him.

Mince Pies (British) I always got confused by Mince Pies as a kid as it wasn't the Mince i thought although i was 500 years late because the Mince was once the meaty mince with anything from rabbit to mutton, pigeon to pheasant produced for the British Tudor Royal Family but over time mince pies gradually became a bit sweeter and less meaty, until the late 19th century when they started to become just sweet and without any meat, they just never bothered to change the name, typical Brits.

Mistletoe (Scandinavian) Stems back to a Norse myth involving the God Loki who killed another God, Baldr, with an arrow made of mistletoe and the tears of his Mother, Frigg, fell onto the red mistletoe berries turning them white, which resurrected her son. Mistletoe came to represent renewal, love and peace with Frigg promising to kiss anyone who passed beneath it. Another one for the Scandinavians and for pervy men everywhere.

Pantomime (Italian) The word is Greek (Oh no, it isn't, oh yes it is) but it was the Italians who came up with the idea of incorporating fairy tales into the slapstick plays with the gender reversal we know today so good one Italians, washed up TV stars thank you.

Saint Nicholas (Turkey) AKA the Bishop of Myra in Turkey during the 3rd Century, St Nicholas was known to travel around give gifts to the poor and on one occasion threw bags of gold coins down a mans chimneys to stop him sending his daughters into a life of prostitution to escape financial hardship so despite being a largely Muslim country that doesn't celebrate Christmas, Turkey get this one.

Santa Claus Name (Nrtherlands/USA) Saint Nicholas in Dutch is Sinterklaas and when they traveled to the New World they took their name with them but as America is a land that mangles other peoples languages, it changed into Santa Claus so half each to the Netherlands and the dictionary-less Americans.

Santa's Red Suit (USA) The orginal Santa wore green to represent the coming of spring and his attire included a long green hooded cloak, as well as a wreath made of holly, mistletoe or ivy but mid 19th Century an American cartoonist, Thomas Nast, drew him in Scarlet which was the colours of the religious robes for the Bishop of Myra in Turkey in the 3rd Century and the colour stuck. That's America on the scoreboard then.

Sleigh Pulling Reindeer (Scandinavian) The idea of a present giving man with a long white beard sat in a sleigh being pulled by reindeer goes back to Odin who would hand out gifts to the well behaved and the first time they are named is in Clement Moore's poem and then Rudolph is handed the job of the lead reindeer when he is created by an advertising copywriter, Robert L May, who created him to sell colouring books so the origins are Scandinavian.

Turkey (British) The same Royals who loved a Minced Pie also liked Peacock on their Christmas Dinner plates but Henry VIII (who ate pretty much anything that walked or squawked), wanted something even more exotic and indulgent and as Turkey was regarded as a 16th Century luxury, that's what he got and the nobilty who were keen to show they were just as exotic as the much married King, did the same and it soon became the thing to have for Christmas Dinner so thanks Henry VIII, another one for us Brits.

Ugly Sweater (Canada) Christmas jumpers have been a thing ever since Christmas and Jumpers have been around but it was the Canadians who had the idea of putting the two together and stopped being chased by Polar Bears and laughing at their uncouth American neighbours long enough to make them a thing and now everyone has at least one hanging in their wardrobe so their maple syrup may not have caught on but their chunky knitwear did.

Wreaths (Scandinavian) The Germans may have had the idea of chopping down a whole tree and dragging it into their living room but that's just one up and a bigger and better version of the Scandinavian wreaths which were bits of the Evergreen Tree with a candle in the centre to provide protection in the long, dark nights of winter where spirits were also thought to be out and about.

Xmas (Greek) The X comes from the Greek letter 'chi' which means Christ. Not the most Christmassy place but that's one for the Greeks.

Yule Log (Scandinavian) Although today we tend to think of it as a chocolatey sponge cake to stuff into our faces in the rare moments we’re not gorging on mince pies and Quality Street, in Nordic tradition, the Yule log was a carefully selected log that was ceremonially brought into the house and burnt in a fireplace during the time of Yule to protect the home and bring good luck.

Totting it all up on my Calculator, it's Frohe Weihnachten German's and God Jul Scandi's but i make it us Brits have introduced the most to the modern day Festive period which hopefully goes some way for making up for also introducing the Spice Girls and Piers Morgan to the World.

Football Jargon For Newbies

On Paper the England Team should have too much for the Senegalese in the World Cup Round of 16 but as some smart-arse once said the game is played on grass and not paper and as some of the Big Dogs have found out, some of the supposed minnows should not be taken lightly but if you are new to Football and your knowledge stops at 'kick the ball and make it go in that direction', then you are probably wondering what the dickens the commentators are talking about so here are some of the Football terms that you need to know in order to enjoy the game.
First lesson is the game is called Football, only Americans call it Soccer and you will be immediately shunned by the Footballing community if you use this certain Americanism or call a nil-nil game 'a shut-out' or call boots, 'cleats'.
The game starts once the ref has checked with his Line-o's and each side will attempt to put the ball in the back of the net while trying to keep a clean sheet and this can be achieved by Parking the bus or making it a game of two halves and bringing on your sub in the later stages, usually a showboater once the legs are gone on the opposition which can really fire up the 12th man.
Some teams have a few hard men who will nobble the other side's Class Act by playing the man and not the ball or try and con the ref and line-o by diving, especially if the defender has the striker in his pocket but generally goals are scored following a howler.
The Video Assistant Referee has been introduced to decipher pen calls which are ball-to-hand or offside although even this can lead to some managers giving the fourth official the hairdryer treatment, it is easy for a manager to lose the dressing room if things are not going the right way for their team.
If you can nick a goal early doors and then shut up shop to grind out the win by taking the ball to the corners late on then you will be successful but sometimes it isn't that easy and then the Subs can play a big part, especially if the box-to-box player who has put in a shift is starting to flag in the latter stages of a game or if a player has received a hospital ball and is unable to run it off or is injured beyond the help of the magic sponge.
The best teams have a combination of a target man up front teamed with a fox in the box although some now play with a false nine and a combination of an anchor in midfield and one who can play in the hole but even the best can miss a sitter and see their chance hoofed into Row Z.
That's pretty much all you need to know to understand football, just don't ask anyone what the offside law is because its complicated and takes so long to explain that it would have probably been changed by FIFA by the time they have finished.

Christmas Carols Explained

As Carols are sometimes centuries old, they are full of weird, old-timey words so we have Angels being harked, Halls being decked and Yuletide Carol's being trolled which we sing along with anyway but the meanings have been lost so i asked a lexicographer what the heck are we singing about each December?   

Before anyone ever jingled any bells they Carol'd which was to dance in a circle holding hands and singing and one of the most confusing carols is Deck The Halls which mentions 'Deck the halls with boughs of holly (Fa la la la la la la la), Troll the ancient Yuletide carol (Fa la la la la la la la)' and
deck means to covering something, the halls are the rooms of your home and a bough of Holly is a branch snipped from a Holly tree although decorate your rooms with tree branches isn't quite so lyrically elegant. To Troll is to sing in a full, rousing voice and Yuletide is an olde word for Christmas.
 
We Wish you Merry Christmas mentions 'Good tidings we bring to you and your kin' which means Good news (Good tidings) and your kin is family while the Figgy pudding which you ask to be bought some of (rather rudely i always thought) is a type of dessert consisting of a steamed cake that contains brandy, dried fruits, and spices aka a Christmas Pudding which confusingly doesn't have a single fig in it.

'We Three Kings' recalls the biblical journey of the Three Kings, Wise Men or Magi and amongst the presents they are bearing are Frankincense which is a sweet smelling tree resin used as incense, Myrhh which is a tree resin also used as incense and Gold although personally i reckon a Playstation or an iphone would have been better received.

'Hark the Herald Angel Sings' is to listen intently (Hark) to the Angels singing and the Bells on Bobtail in 'Jingle Bells' is a horse which has had its tail cut short (Bobbed) and it's owners made up for it by attaching bells although i'm sure Bob would prefer his tail if he was asked.

The Round yon virgin in 'Silent Night' is simply saying all is calm and bright around the yonder (yon) Virgin, the sentence was simply truncated when it was translated from the original German to make it fit properly and the line 'Long lay the world in sin and error pining' in 'O Holy Night' means a World full of sin and error pining (yearning for something), in this case a liddle baby Jesus.

Wassail is a toast of warm wine in Old Norse and means 'Be Well' and Wassailing is the act of being given a warm Christmas drink after all that Caroling in the cold winter and toasting the giver (Wassailing) for their generosity

As for the Classic Most Wonderful Time Of The Year with it's holiday greetings and gay happy meetings when friends come to call, gay may mean something different today but back then it was the old word for Happy so Andy Williams isn't saying what you think he is and neither is Fred Flintstone who in the theme tune is having a gay old time although he did spend a lot of time with Barney Rubble but let's not go there.