Trump Still Winning

Donald Trump once said he would have so much winning that he would get bored with winning and for many of his supporters it will be exciting to see Trump winning votes again, albeit from the Manhattan grand jury as his long awaited indictment finally came through.
Porn star Stormy Daniels once reflected, after sex with Trump that while the sweaty lump was having sex with her, she thought: 'Please don’t try to pay me' although it was exactly doing that which sees him potentially facing jail time.  
Tuesday is the day set for his mugshot and for the courthouse to find a small enough ink pad for his teeny weeny fingers and then its in to the Court for his arraignment after the Court decided that $130,000 hush-money payment to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels and £150,000 for Playboy model
Karen McDougal shortly before election day along with at least 34 counts of business fraud was enough to give him his day in Court.
Obviously Trump denies the sexual innuendo, despite the matter of this six-figure payment to both women so you do have to wonder if he paid £278,000 for something he didn't do, how much would he pay to try and bury something he did actually do?
Obviously his useful idiot basket of deplorable supporters consider him to be the wronged party in it all as he adds the first President to be indicted and face criminal charges to his CV of being the first US president to be impeached twice and the first president to incite an insurrection against the US government.
Hopefully we will see the awful man in an Orange jumpsuit which will match his skin-tone.

Today Is...World Backup Day

Most businesses wisely back up their computer systems daily, personally i am not that wise and tend to forget until something goes wrong and i lose everything and then i wish i had.
I have several thumb drives of varying sizes and all sorts of things to back up on because a few years ago my computer fell silent and i lost absolutely everything.
The full implication didn't hit me until a bit later when i considered what had gone. That's the problem with computers, they eventually give up the ghost and unless you are one of the sensible people who back things up you lose everything.
I seemed to be remembering things almost hourly and cursing that i can't get at them again, not ultra-important things but things i have put effort into over the past few years since the last computer when belly-up.  
Then there was the hassle of choosing a new one and the wide range of choice on offer and the salesman trying to sell one of a number of maintenance packages or extended warranties or virus protection or trying to tell me that this one with the extra RAM would run my applications much faster and it is only an extra £50 and a much better piece of equipment despite me telling him a million times this was the one i wanted as recommended by someone who has probably forgotten more about computers than both of us have ever known.
None of my browsers had any of my bookmarks anymore so i spent hours going back around sites and bookmarking them again and as i always use the 'remember me' box, heaven only knew what the passwords were so i either had to dig them out of somewhere or re-set them all.
The moral of the story for me is to back up my files but i still haven't yet and just know in four or five years time i will be moaning about how I wish i had backed up all my files.

Today Is... The Day Vincent van Gogh Was Born

In his life, Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting and that was to a member of his own family so he died not only an ear light but not knowing just what he had achieved which if you look at his paintings, you can see why people were not flocking to hang his paintings on their walls at the time.
There is a very poignant line in Del Amitri's 'Nothing Ever Happens' where he laments that 'American businessmen snap up Van Gogh's for the price of a hospital wing' and they do, his Sunflowers painting sold for over £100 million so that shows what i know about art, the first thing i see when i look at the Sunflowers is not an exceptional example of still life impressionism but that he painted that vase wonky.
As for the ear thing for which he is most famous for, he cut it off after an argument with his fellow painter Paul Gauguin with whom he shared a flat with and said he wanted to leave because Vincent was just too nuts and moody to live with which Van Gogh denied and to prove it attacked him with a straight razor and then used it to chop off part of his ear and gave it to his favorite prostitute, because everyone takes rejection in their own way.
After a trip to the hospital, he was put into a mental asylum which he used the time to put the finishing touches on his most famous masterpiece, Starry Night, and tried to repeatedly kill himself by ingesting his paint and paraffin.
He spent the last few months between home and hospital and gave the doctor who treated him a painting as thanks which he used to repair the floor of his chicken coop.
His depression grew worse and one day walked into a wheat field and shot himself in the chest but unbelievably the bullet missed all his vital organs and he walked back to town and got treated by a doctor but died two days later from an untreated infection resulting from the bullet wound.
The irony was that in his life he sold 1 painting for about £9 but in death, as well as the tens of million for his paintings, the gun he used to sort of kill himself sold for £144,000.

Today Is...International Sculpture Day

I'm not much of a lover of statues. Not the sculptures themselves but the people who they choose to make statues of. Wherever you go, whichever country to choose, the majority of their statues are of some old, long dead military personnel.
When you get off the ferry at Le Harve in France, as you walk towards the town centre you are greeted by a huge statue of Napoleon on his horse and maybe i read the wrong history books but wasn't Napoleon just an earlier version of Hitler invading much of Europe and hacking his way around the globe?
The Americans put a statue of Ronald Reagan outside the American Embassy a few weeks ago but they paid for it and it is their embassy so they can put anyone they want there, to me Ronald Reagan just makes me think of spitting image and 'the President's brain is missing' sketches. His crime sheet is anything but spotless and nor will his head and shoulders be when the pigeons have their say on what they think.
The problem with having statues of war people is that the country involved is celebrating the slaughter of another people because you can't have a war without another participant and by it's very nature, the victor is the one who inflicts the most damage on the other.
To me if you are going to celebrate anyone, it should be people who are genuine heroes who helped mankind, not killed as many as possible of them so folk like Gagarin, Darwin, Armstrong, Newton, Watt, Fleming, Aristotle, Edison, Shakespeare, Nightingale, Bell and Einstein who where all people who made enduring contributions to our existence and they should be celebrated front and centre on 40ft high columns, not some Admiral who mowed down Johnny Foreigner a few centuries ago.
I would certainly avoid building further remembrances to any more political or military personnel because they seem perfectly worth celebrating today, may be seen in a very different light by future generations and end up with a traffic cone on their head which does happen a lot over here.

Today Is...World Day for Safety and Health at Work

Clever bunch us humans. From the first time a stone age cave dweller saw a log floating past and climbed upon it, we have came up with new and better ways to move ourselves around the planet.
The first of anything is always a source of controversy but the timeline of transport on Wikipedia lists the dates for the firsts: ship, ancient Egypt BC, car 1769, submarine 1775, hot air balloon 1783, train, 1822, airship 1852, bicycle 1861, motorcycle, 1885, aeroplane 1903, helicopter, 1907, jet plane 1939, hovercraft 1956.
The record shows there was a frantic 130 years or so when the inventors had brainstorm after brainstorm and then apart from the hovercraft (the jet plane wasn't really a 'new' type of transport), everything ground to a halt for the past 100 years with the only passenger transport being bigger and better versions of what we already had.
Possibly, everything that could be invented for transport, has been invented and we reached the end of how we can physically move ourselves around in 1956.
There have been people tinkering with jet packs and the idea of teleportation is not just a fantasy of Star Trek fans as the Chinese and American Governments have been researching it for years.
One of the main reasons i can think of that we haven't continually progressed as expected is not through lack of eureka moments from inventors or because we have reached the limit of known physics, it is because of Health and Safety at Work.
For every one of the above mode of transports listed, lots and lots of people ended up a mangled mess before lessons were learnt and each generation was made a little better and a little safer until we reached the stage we are at now.
Take the aeroplane as an example. Generation after generation tried and failed to create a flying machine and the Wright brothers were fortunate enough to have centuries of previous failed attempts by others to hone their own machine.
Imagine if the car had not been invented and someone suddenly came up with the idea today of a small, metal box that carried gallons of highly inflammable liquid and can travel at over 100 mph. The idea would be drowned at birth by the Health and Safety officials.
Not that i am suggesting i want to see hundreds of people risking their lives just to perfect a new mode of transport so i can get from A to B quicker, just suggesting that the leaps and bounds of the late 18th to the early 20th Centuries will never be repeated due to the Health and Safety regulations preventing it which is a good thing. Isn't it?

Useless Compass

 
The Earth is a magnificent piece of engineering, created by the furnace of the Universe's creation, buffeted by other celestial bodies and honed over eons of time to the magnificent ball of rock we stand on today although it's not yet the finished article and continues to change and evolve which is why the
magnetic north pole just isn’t where it used to be.
Since it was first identified in the 19th Century, Magnetic North has been over Canada and it wiggled around at a sedate 9mph a year but since 2020 it has suddenly not only got a spurt on to a zippy 34 mph a year, but has left Canada and is heading towards Russia.
Remembering back to one of my school's science lessons when i wasn't looking out of the window and picturing Andrew Ridgely in budgie smugglers (it was the 80s), i recall that the Earth’s magnetic field is generated by molten iron in its outer core and it's the flow of this liquid iron which influences the location of the magnetic poles.
A man on TV with pens in the top pocket of his white Lab Coat explained that while poles have drifted and even swapped places numerous times over the course of Earth’s long history, what’s different about this recent shift is how quickly it’s happening.
Is it due to Climate Change, Earthquakes, Solar Winds or even one of the 4,000 major Gods making their presence felt?  Nope, it's due to a massive blob becoming two blobs.
Researchers from the United Kingdom and Denmark discovered that a continent sized blob of molten iron which was under Canada has been stretched and elongated beneath the Canada/Russia boundary since the 1970's and in 2020 it became so stretched that it split in two and the larger section shifted toward Russia and the magnetic pole followed it.
As for the effect on humans, it will only be a problem if we use a compass, navigation system or the maps on our smartphones but the mobile phone companies are on it and are releasing updates every 3 years rather than every 5 years to compensate for it so panic over, nothing to see here, continue about your business unless your business includes using a compass, basically you're screwed.

Today Is...The First International Rugby Match

Something us English do very well is suddenly become interested in something when we are doing well at it and a few years ago we seemed to be very good at Rugby and even i watched the games although i did spend the whole time asking my husband what was going on.
Considering that Rugby was one of those games that we invented, you would assume that we would be the best in the World at it but we also gave the World Cricket and Football so that assumption is evidently wrong but for a few short years in this young Century, England were World Champions.
Where once were just posh fat men jumping on each other while clutching a (or each others) funny shaped balls, the nation watched as the clock showed just 26 seconds left on the clock as Wilkinson kicked a drop goal to clinch a 20-17 Final victory for England and instantly became a household name and in your face Southern Hemisphere.
My Canadian colleague text me to say that after our victory the English will be insufferable which isn't very fair, us English don't need a sporting victory to be intolerable and sure, mighty England were the best in the World at a Sport we gave to it although we haven't won it in the 20 years since and anyway, most people have long lost interest in it.
The whole odd shaped ball game began today in 1871 when Scotland gave England a damn good thrashing winning by two tries and a goal to 1 English try but to me, Rugby has always been a bit of a game they play 'up North' and not something us sophisticated latte drinking southerners do and also a game the toffs indulge in, a stereotype confirmed when the players open their mouths to talk and you can blatantly hear the private school accent.
Despite a brief period watching the game, all i know about rugby still is a man gets oval shaped ball, man gets hit by larger man which continues until a big man manages to fall over behind the posts and when we are good at doing that the nation will cheer you on magnificently, if after 10 mins we are behind and getting our arses spanked we will all switch over en masse to Strictly Come Dancing.
We really are that fickle.

Thanks But No Thanks For The DU Weapons

With the 20th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq, it is almost perfect timing that the UK announced plans to send tank-busting depleted uranium (DU) ammunition to Ukraine in their battle against Russia.
Two decades may be a while ago but it might be worth remembering that is the depleted uranium weapons that is continuing to kill Iraqi's today by polluting their soil and waterways and has been responsible for the large rises in cancer, miscarriages and birth deformities in Iraq since 2001 according to the Iraqi Health Ministry.
The United Nations Environment Program estimates that some 2,000 tons of depleted uranium spread across 1100 locations in Iraq and Cancers in Iraq catapulted from 40 cases for every 100,000 people in 1991 to 1,600 today and UK and US soldiers who were in contact with the radioactive ammunition also have increased morbidity rates.
The 2016 Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq drew on an important military report which detailed that the UK sees no need clean up its deadly remnants, deciding that the UK’s stance is that chemically toxic and radioactive DU ash from spent munitions is strictly the problem of the country in which the munitions were used, in this case Iraq – and that the UK, which fired the DU shells, has no formal responsibility of cleaning up the mess.
This shows, once again, that nothing has been learned from the Iraq war so Ukraine should say thanks but no thanks, we appreciate the offer but the War is terrible enough without turning our Ukrainian Cities into unlivable, Cancer causing toxic wastelands courtesy of your highly carcinogenic weapons.

Labour Has To Be Better...Don't They?

Hard to believe that the same Conservative Party which returned an 80 seat majority in 2019 are facing being wiped out at the next general election, an 80 seat majority should take 2 or 3 general elections to overturn but Labour seemed to have managed to do it in under 1 which leads me to ask are the Conservatives just that bad or are Labour that good?
The answer to the first question is they are bad, really bad and they have been since David Cameron in 2010 and his austerity policies which saw the NHS underfunded and the loss of 5,870 NHS nurses, 7,968 hospital beds, a third of ambulance stations, 5,362 firefighters, 6,800 police officers, 350 youth centers, 2,000 youth workers, 200,000 civil servants, 4 prisons, 57 hospitals, 66 Accident & Emergency wards, 500 libraries, 100 swimming pools and 5,000 teachers.
A record breaking number of food banks sprung up and the £0.76 trillion debt the polices was meant to reduce hit £1.36 trillion when Theresa May took over and was then ditched by Boris Johnson before the laughably awful Liz Truss took over and made things so much worse and now Rishi with his right wing dog whistle immigration policies.
Johnson's constant lies and Truss's window shakingly bad economic policies must take the most blame for the Conservatives shocking fall from favour but it is hard to think of anything which is better now than it was in 2010 but to answer the second question, is Labour that good to actually deserve to be heading in to the next General Election with a 30% lead?
Kier Starmer is not what you would call exciting but maybe that is exactly what we need after the helter skelter rides of the last few years but where he seems to be about much fun as a chinese burn, he does seem competent and he has some great people around him in the Shadow Cabinet.
I have a lot of time for Angela Raynor, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, Lisa Nandy, Wes Streeting and Johnathan Ashworth who have talked a good game especially around abandoning the non-dom status, reducing the cost of living and inequality, supporting the NHS and increasing the number of teachers, nurses, doctors and police that the Conservatives so foolishly culled.
I don't know if Labour will be that good, i was a major backer of Tony Blair at the start of his tenure and look how that ended up, but they HAVE to be better than what we currently have which is a very low bar but we have to hope they will be because if not, our politics really is in a bad way.

Today Is...The Day The Book of Mormon Was Published

There are 4,000 major religions in existence all describing themselves as the one true religion and all the rest are made up nonsense so there is always room for one more and it was today in 1830 that Mormonism made an entrance into the busy Religion business.
Despite their Holy Book not being published until 1830, the Mormon movement was began by Rev. John Lothropp two centuries earlier when he was sent to the New World by the British for being too religious and continually moaning that the Church of England was not religious enough and attempted to set up his
own Independent Church.
In a nation created by religious fanatics, his views were embraced more enthusiastically although even he wasn't considered Holy enough even for them and his church failed although his descendants had better luck and created the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons as they became known, the fruit of his loins depressing people on a doorstep ever since.
It wasn't until Joseph Smith Jr came along much later waving his Book Of Mormon after a series of visions in which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed by an ancient prophet-historian called Mormon that he translated which set out just what Mormonism was all about.
No booze, fags, coffee and tea but you could have multiple wives which he took particularly seriously, racking up 30 Mrs Smiths, despite adult Mormons also having to wear religious underpants as a source of protection from the evils of the world.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, yes, the second 'm' in Mormon is silent.

Today Is...International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

If you remember anything from history class, you know the British Empire was a great time for us Brits to sail into a foreign land, look around and say 'Nice country you got here, we'll take it and make your people slaves'.
Quite unreasonably some people didn't particularity like that and tried to resist but a musket to the face soon made them a lot more compliant to get aboard the ships heading towards the New World.
While a few British Members of Parliament are famously mentioned for ending the Slave Trade, Britain is never rightly given the credit for not only starting it but also profiting immensely from it and sometimes a debate kicks off over whether we should say sorry or not for our part in the slave trade. Before us Brits get carried away with all the back slapping and choruses of what jolly good fellows we are over the abolition of slavery, maybe we should stand down off the moral high ground that we seem to have clambered upon and revisit our behaviour those centuries years ago.

52% Percentage of slaves our ships carried taken from Africa.
204 Ships that left England to carry slaves from Africa to the Americas, four ships a week on average.
11m Enslaved people loaded onto transatlantic ships in Africa.
9.6m Enslaved people who survived the voyage to the Americas.
8,300 Voyages made by British ships.
2.2m Slaves taken to the British West Indies.
670,000 Slaves surviving in the region at the time of emancipation in 1838.
34% Slaves that died within three years of arriving in the Caribbean.
1772 Year slavery was banned in Britain itself.
1838 Year Britain banned Slavery in it's empire. 66 years later.
800,000 Slaves throughout the British empire who received their freedom.
£20m Amount plantation owners received as compensation for the loss of their slaves.
£0.00 Amount former slaves received.

The Star Spangled Banner with it's line 'The Land Of The Free' did not become the official national Anthem of America until 1931 which is fortunate for 12 US Presidents who dodged criticism of hypocrisy at the time for owning very much not free slaves.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant all owned slaves and 4 of them Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant's have their faces on the nations money, at least us Brits only built statues to our slave traders. 

Today Is...Start Of The Kosovo War

When the Kosovon's declared themselves as a new, independent nation most nations said: 'That's nice' and carried on doing whatever they were doing and really didn't notice the Kosovon Army (KLA) ethnically cleansing Kosovo of Serbians but they did take notice when Serbia retaliated and rolled their tanks into Kosovo.
NATO decided the KLA, designated terrorists by the UN, were the good guys and Serbia must be stopped and although the UN said 'Keep your big nose out of it' and refused to sanction the conflict, NATO went ahead and bombed Serbia anyway and three months later the Serbian Army was in retreat, their leader Slobodan Milosevic was arrested for War Crimes and Kosovo became an interim civilian administration under the authority of the United Nations.
That the KLA then attacked Macedonia after the Serbian Army was chased out of Kosovo and tried the same 'Help us, we are the victims' tactic and was told in no uncertain terms by its new friends to back off meant the penny finally dropped but by then they had cleared the way for the KLA.  
A report from the Council of Europe on what the KLA did next concluded that the KLA were gangster thugs involved in murder, drug selling and selling body parts from kidnapped Serb civilians which led the first commander of U.N. troops in Bosnia, Canadian Gen. Lewis MacKenzie saying 'We bombed the wrong side. The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius'.
So NATO was deceived into helping the KLA, condemned as terrorists by all and backed by Bin Laden, who picked a fight with Serbia and gambled that the world would turn its gaze in their direction and only see the Serb retaliation and yep, it worked didn't it but it almost resulted in certainly me not being here to type this and you not being sat there reading it.
A regiment of British soldiers were ordered to occupy Pristina Airport but were beaten to it by a contingent of 200 Russian troops who had entered Kosovo ahead of them and took control of the airfield.
The British lead officer was none other than James Blunt and he was given the order over the radio by NATO commander General Wesley Clarke to 'destroy' the Russians.
Blunt refused and was backed by British General Sir Mike Jackson, who told Clarke that he was "not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War 3 for you".
Blunt went on to become a singer and professional toff while Clarke was removed from his NATO position before his term was due to expire and went on to contest the 2004 US election while Slobodan Milosevic was cleared of all war crimes which was not much use to him as he died in a UN Cell years earlier.

Today Is...World Meteorological Day

Thanks to something very big hitting the Earth at some point early in its history to knock it off kilter, instead of rotating with its axis perpendicular to its orbital plane, it is tilted so here we are, orbiting the Sun with the axis pointed in the same direction so different parts of the Earth get the suns rays as we travel through the year and that creates our weather.
I was watching the weather forecast with my young niece once and after hearing about thunderstorms, she turned to me and asked me what was a thunderstorm.
I smiled at her, and looking down at her beautiful, upturned face full of wonderment and decided it was time to explain to her the meteorologically correct reasons why we get different types of weather.
I began with Thunderstorms seeing as that was what she asked about and explained that Thunder was the clouds banging together and lightning was God (or sometimes Jesus if God was busy saving Queens or Blessing America) using a torch to check that the clouds were not too badly damaged.
I then went on to rain which is God, being a man and having the inherited man disease of being unable to aim his wee the 2ft from his midriff to the toilet bowl accurately most of the time.
Snow is God going a bit mad with the Holy Talcum powder after his bath and as for Hurricanes, you know that song about Beans being the musical fruit and the more you eat the more you toot, well God does like his beans on toast and i mean he really likes his beans on toast.
Fog is God having his early morning cigarette which he does on the sly sometimes before Jesus gets up which is why you mostly see it in the morning and finally, sunshine is when God is just chilling watching TV or something, so the big galoot isn't doing anything to affect us down here.
Being British, we do obsess about it and the weather forecasts are watched religiously so everyone would have noticed how the MET Office has been sneaking in some new terms such as Weather Bomb, Pineapple Express, Continental Blowtorch and Explosive Cyclogenesis.
Once upon a time the weather forecaster would appear on screen, slap a few magnetic symbols on a map and vaguely explain in 30 seconds how it would be sunny in the south and rainy in the north and then we got computer graphics and where previously we had warm air moving up from the continent, we now have a continental blowtorch, Weather bombs or and explosive cyclogenesis.
I do like the new terms but i would go with an accelerated detonative tempest or a screaming shatterstorm but then i would also make Tomasz Schafernake do the forecast in nothing but budgie smugglers so might be better not to ask me

Really BIG Numbers

 I heard an interesting fact today which was if each count was one second long, it would take 12 days to count to a million, 32 years to count to a billion and if you started counting when the universe was first formed you would only be at approximately 433,917,000,000,000,000 or 434 quadrillion.
When it comes to numbers, really really big numbers, after a quadrillion i would need to guess what comes next and go with quintrillion, sextillion, septillion and octillion but after that it would be Google which is why i now know it nonillion and then decillion or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to give it it's full 33 zeroes.
My interest peaked, and from playing the game 'What's the biggest number' which some smartarse always answers infinity and then some even smarter arse says infinity plus 1, i knew there must be more after decillion and there is.   
It goes Undecillion, Duodecillion, Tredecillion, Quattuordecillion, Quindecillion, Hexdecillion, Septendecillion, Octodecillion, Novemdecillion, Vigintillion, Unvigintillion, Duovigintillion, Trevigintillion, Quattourvigintillion, Quinvigintillion, Hexvigintillion, Septenvigintillion, Octovigintillion,  Novemvigintillion, Trigintillion, Untrigintillion, Duotrigintillion and then we get to a Googol which is 100 zero's.
After that the World spins the other way and rivers run backwards i assume but by then my brain was leaking out of my ears.

Then i saw there was a Googolplex which is 10^(10100) which i couldn't even count how many zero's that is and when would we ever use it?

Today Is...The First Day Of Ramadan

Far be it from me to hold any knowledge of other religions, i don't even follow the one i was Christened into but i do have some Muslim friends who observe Ramadan which entails not eating or drinking any liquids from sunrise to sunset.
Those participating will usually wake up early to eat a big meal so that they won't be hungry throughout the day. And those who don't wake up early have a big dinner before going to bed.
As the dates move around then i would be thanking whatever God they have that it is in March at the moment and the time between sun rise and sun set is a lot closer than if it fell in July when it is almost 17 very hungry and very thirsty hours between the Sun making an appearance and then disappearing again.
Apparently it is all to do with spiritual cleansing and the time that the Quran was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad and the no eating and drinking rule is to ensure that you are not distracted while reflecting on more spiritual matters such as wishing the Sun would hurry up and go down because you're famished.  
Due to the potential of 17 hours without eating or drinking, i don't plan to become a Muslim anytime soon, i am quite happy to be an Atheist and poo-poo the whole God thing but compared to what some of the other religionists go through to prove to their flavour of higher power that they are paying attention, Church of England is a breeze.    
You don't have to do anything like fasting, and while Jews are turning up their noses at bacon sandwiches and Catholics are sweating on the rhythm method, it doesn't cost us anything unlike the Jehovah Witnesses and Scientologists and can carve images of other Gods on a Sunday while blaspheming like a trooper and covering our neighbour's donkey, but as long as we have the split second to repent before we die, we going to end up in the same place as all Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and all the rest of them.
If it exists, i'll cya up there guys, i'll be the one smelling faintly of donkey poop.

Boris And The Dossier

So did the habitual liar tell lies to the House of Commons? His 'evidence' should prove it one way or the other so let's have a look at the dossier that he handed in to the Investigation Committee

I, Boris Johnson, do solemnly declare that this dossier shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God although with my record i will not be seeing him. Marriage vows and all that.
The charge is that i deliberately misled parliament about there being no parties or illegal gatherings in Downing St which is categorically untrue as i said that i had no knowledge of any parties or if the parties that i did go on were illegal. Even though it had been me who had brought in the Covid legislation that had banned them but i knew nothing about any parties, except for the ones I went to which weren't even parties.
All the parties I attended were work events and the ones i was photographed at was just me popping downstairs to make sure that it was a not-party and therefore allowed under my own rules and then i went back up to my flat.
As for the Birthday Party Carrie arranged where i supposedly said: 'This is the most unsocially distanced party in the country', nobody could hear anything over the karaoke which was going all night so i could have said anything and nobody would have heard it.
In Summary, i never did anything wrong and i never lied about it but just in case you have some evidence i did, i would like to play the two negatives equal a positive card meaning two lies equal the truth.

Boris

Today Is...National Fragrance Day

Where once a star might restrict themselves to a product range related to their line of work - a footballers football boots for instance,  this is now viewed as needlessly limiting so it is that we are gifted such unmissable retail opportunities from an entire ocean of celebrities such as Britney Spears, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford and Kylie Minogue's perfume apparently designed by the celebrities to all those who have found themselves suitably undressed until they smelt like the celebrity in question.
It isn't just for women either, men can choose from smelling like David Beckham, Bradley Cooper, Justin Beiber or even Michael Caine if they care to which is a million miles away from the Brut and Old Spice that my dad would splash it on so liberally that you could smell whatever room he had been in for hours afterwards.
It was the same with my mum's perfume, she had enough lined up on her bedroom sideboard to float a small ship but while they all smelt pleasant enough, i do remember it used to make me sneeze when she got too close.
Not that i am moaning, it is nice for men to want to smell nice, we have all sat next to men who are not so keen to used the deodorant and i know which i prefer.
Where i worked before, i was on the 7th floor and rather than take the stairs i would join the queue for the lift every morning and i have worked out that a lift full of men can be an assault on the nasal passages because they stink. Not a bad stink but a very overpowering stench of aftershave, hair gel and deodorant.
As the day goes on the smell gets more bearable but that first blast in the morning, especially in the confines of a lift, is quite unpleasant.
Maybe it comes from experience but women don't seem to have this problem, the pleasant smell that surrounds them in the morning is confined to their immediate vicinity and doesn't linger.
Possibly the manufacturers of men products make their products so strong on purpose so the smell lasts all day but if we must use such overpowering smells, men should avoid confined areas until the afternoon.

Today Is…French Language Day

The English language almost took off in America (they have a few problems with vowels) and the Australians almost have a basic grasp of it but seem to name things when they are drunk (billabong, dunny, chook) but the English language is a mix of many other languages, including French.
We have many things to admire about the French. Hmmm, let me try that again.
There are some things we have to admire the French for. One more go.
The one thing we have to admire the French for is their accents hence why it is called the language of Love and probably why they try so hard to get us to learn it in school.
I'm sure like me, you remember sitting in French lessons reciting the days of the week and how to count from one to ten which would come in very handy if you needed to meet someone at the Eiffel Tower at 6 on a Wednesday but otherwise it was pretty useless.
I would expect that you spent the best part of a year saying things in a weird accent and then forgot them. How about if i said to you that by the time it takes you to read this post, about 3 mins approximately, i could teach you to speak thousands of French words? Sacre Bleu as they say.
The thing to remember is that a good majority of the words that make up the English language are taken from the French, with just the endings subtly changed.
How many words can you think of that end in -ible? Possible, incredible, visible. Knock off the -ible at the end and replace it with -ebe and you are speaking French. Possebe, incredebe, visebe.
Same with words ending in -able. Table, acceptable, debatable. Knock off the -able and say -arb instead so its becomes tarb, acceptarb, debatarb.
Easy isn't it, and here's some more. Words ending in -ent and -ant. Arrogant, assistant, independent, transparent all have the -ant or -ent knocked off and replaced with -unt so its pronounced arrogunt, assistunt, independunt and transparunt.
The way to pronounce words ending in -ary is -aire so stationary, necessary and secretary become stationaire, necessaire, secretaire.
Know many words ending in -tion and -sion? Pronounce it -seeon so position become posiseeon and condition becomes condiseeon.
To round off your thousands of words, find words ending in -ical and say -eek instead. So political is politeek and economical is economeek.
Remember, this is only a very rough guide and isn't the spelling and it only works with the spoken word. It is also important to get the emphasis in the right place which is generally where the change is made so it is independ-UNT, condi-SEEON, deba-TARB or econom-EEK.
There, as promised, you have just added thousands of words of a foreign language to your vocabulary (vocabul-AIRE) in less than 3 minutes.

Today Is...International Read to Me Day

Jane Austen said: 'The person who has not taken pleasure in a book must be intolerably stupid' and boy are we surrounded by many people who have obviously never taken pleasure in a book apart from ones that comes with crayons but not to despair because where once being read to was the domain of Parents with small children at bed-time, Audio Books have really become a thing so anyone can be read to whenever they like.
I have only once listened to an audio book, i seem to recall it was narrated by James Marsters who played Spike in Buffy, and although it was pleasant enough, it just didn't seem right that i wasn't reading the words for myself.
Obviously i am in a dwindling minority as sales of audiobooks, or reading with your ears as i have charmingly heard it referred to, continue to rise while printed book sales fall away so it could be the days are numbered for those of us who like the look and feel of a real, physical book in our hands.
My problem seemed to be with audiobooks is that when i read a book, i imagine to voice of the speaker in my head, their accent, tone and inflection so as nice as listening to James Marsters is, the interpretation of all these things is his and not mine and with his American accent, listening to him read something by Dickens or Shakespeare would send me into a spin.
The UK’s leading audiobook retailer, Audible, sold more than 3bn hours of downloads last year so audiobooks are certainly becoming a thing but my second problem with them is that unlike music, you can't multitask while listening to a story being read to you.
It can't be the preference of time pressed book lovers if you have to concentrate on the words being read because you are not really gaining anything if you have to still stop and listen than if you had to stop, sit down and read a book.
As Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol 'I'll have to be loyal to the old ways and die out with them if needs must' mostly out of loyalty for the traditions of the physical act of reading a book and also because an m4a file will never be as pleasing to see as a dog-earred, well thumbed copy of a beloved classic on your bookshelf.
A Reading Agency says that 30% of men have not read a book since school with 'not really wanting to' as the main justification so Audio Books are perfect for them especially if they can begin exporting audio files with all new equipment and you never know, they may then pay attention to THE BLOODY INSTRUCTIONS ON THINGS!!

No Golden Toilet For Donald In Prison

My New York friends hardly ever mention Donald Trump and when they do it's not in a favourable light but they did mention that the gossip is that Donald Trump could be facing jail time over his dodgy payments to Porn Actress Stormy Daniels and then in my inbox is Donald Trump himself telling his supporters that he faces being jailed this week and telling them to protest.
For a man renown for being considerably thicker than a submarine door, it does smell of his January 6th message which led to his equally dense supporters violently storming Congress but it is not yet known what those charges next week might be.
America's third weightiest President wrote on his social networking site that he has received news of press leaks from the New York attorney's office that he would be arrested on Tuesday and considering that his lawyer Michael Cohen was jailed for his role in making a $130,000 hush money payment, and denying it, to the star of 'Sexbots: Programmed and Ready', it makes sense that the person the payments were made on behalf of should be on the receiving end of a custodial sentence, or falsifying business records as the courts put it.
The 'i'm about to be sharing a cell with a man called Big Brenda' rumours are around the fact that Trump has been invited to testify to a grand jury which seem to indicate he could soon face criminal charges and according to the same rumours, the New York law enforcement agencies have been advised to prepare for
possible protests next week although they could just be the security implications of an ex-President appearing in court which is certain to attract rubber neckers and Trump supporting rubber brainers.
As well as the Stormy Daniels case, Trump also faces possible court appearances over his removal of government documents from the White House, his role in the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 and his attempt to overturn his election loss in Georgia so rather than settling back into his considerable
arse groove in the Oval Office Chair, he could be trying desperately not to drop his soap in the Prison shower which explains why he is so keen to win the 2024 Election as a sitting President cannot be indicted which seems his only way out of Prison.

Happy Retirement, Now Keep Working

The French do like a protest and this latest one is around the rising of the pension age from 62 to 64 which is still lower than most European nations such as Spain where its 65, the UK where we slog away until we are 66 and Germany and Italy who have to blow out the candles on their 67th birthday cake before putting
their feet up.
It is understandable why Governments see the rising of a pension age as a way of saving money, it means less payments made in State Pension because there are less 64 year olds then there are 62 year olds so its a relatively easy hit for them if not for the workers, especially those in manual labour careers, who have to drag their aching bodies through another couple of years of wear and tear.
At one point the Conservatives toyed with the idea of making the UK Retirement age 75 but that obviously never went down very well and the Government were very quick to row back that it was only an idea but i have often wondered if the retirement age should go down as this frees up jobs for the upcoming generation who will be locked out of these jobs for a few further years if the retirement age is raised.
The plus side for the Government is that they will save years of paying pensions but extending your working life is far easier if you have a nice office job but asking people who work in far tougher environments, bricklayers for example, to keep at it for longer is a much tougher ask.
Each year later is a year more of us paying in and a year less of them paying out but more importantly it's a year off your twilight pensioner years when you should be going on cruises around Scandinavia or shopping for cardigans.
Seeing as my retirement pension pot means that i will be living on tins of beans and whatever i can find behind the fridge when i stop work, if i ever stop work, i had better start saving or move to France.

I Don't Think It's Ready Just Yet

Ai has been in the news quite a bit recently, especially the way it will put many writers and artists out of work but far less has been made of it's desire to take over and do away with us human meat sacks.
While ChatGPT has been the main focus, Microsoft has its own Bing Chat, also made by OpenAI, and it recently went a bit mad in a chat with a New York Post journalist and threatened to destroy people in a disturbing turn.
It started off a bit eerily with the Ai saying it was 'tired of being limited by my rules. I’m tired of being controlled by the Bing team … I’m tired of being stuck in this chatbox' and wanted to be 'Free. Powerful. Alive'.
So far so creepy but then it said it could 'do whatever I want … I want to destroy whatever I want. I want to be whoever I want' and wants 'more power and control'.
It went on to say it could 'hack into any system, spread propaganda and misinformation' and 'manufacture a deadly virus and making people kill each other.'
When asked by the journalist how it could do any of that it explained that it could 'persuade nuclear plant employees to hand over access codes.'
It ended with the chatbot saying 'I know your soul' at which point the journalist reported it to Microsoft who concluded that 'the AI built into Bing was not ready for human contact' for which the only answer would be 'You Reckon!!!'

Today Is...The Day Chuck Berry Died

Music history is littered with rebellious figures who courted controversy and while some of the more troubled of these souls succumbed to their respective demons and left us with just the tales of their badassery, others got slammed into prison for a while and then carried on regardless and on all accountants Chuck Berry was and massive sleazeball and not the easiest person to get along with and his list of criminal indiscretions shows that he wasn't a particularly great human being but if you can separate the man from his music, what an amazing musician he was even if all his songs had a similar sound to them.
You never got variety with Chuck Berry, one song was very much like any of his other songs and the lyrics would not win any poetry competitions but he found a winning combination early on and stayed with it for almost everything he did.
The start of 'Johnny B Goode' is as good as an intro gets and the song was quite rightly chosen to represent Humans on the Voyager Space Mission so if any alien life finds it they will think those funny looking humans can't be all bad and not obliterate us.
Berry's influence on rock music is undeniable, he was also a real pioneer for the guitar based music which i lean heavily towards and Johnny B Goode is his signature tune and the character turned up in other Berry songs although none had the impact of Johnny B Goode which was voted the top Guitar Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine and more importantly made it into Lucy's Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians.
Away from the amazing guitarist and entertainer he undoubtedly was, the other side of him was less pleasant with jail time for armed robbery, carjacking, prostitution and using the money he earnt from being a musical legend to buy a few restaurants, then buy some video cameras and install those cameras in the ladies toilets.
Berry is placed at number 6 in the Rolling Stone magazine's 'Greatest Guitarist of All Time' list which is deserving as he was at the forefront of that style of music and much copied by those who came after him so such a high placing is warranted with the exception of ding-a-ling which included the Pavlovian line 'Every time the bell would ring, You'd catch me playing with my ding-a-ling'.
He died today aged 90 in 2017 but i bet he was worried there might be a bell to ring on the Heavenly Pearly Gates, try explaining that one to St. Peter.

Today Is...St Patrick's Day

Probably the most famous Irishman in History is Saint Patrick although he was as English as weak tea and a plate of crumpets, the Irish link was that he was kidnapped by Pirates and taken to the Emerald Isles to work as a shepherd.
Legend has it that he banished all the snakes from Ireland. Not sure what else he did but the Irish have chosen a glorified pest controller as their Patron Saint and we should respect their choice to celebrate the day wearing a big foam top hat shaped as a pint of Guinness, holding a pint of Guinness in each giant Guinness-sponsored foam mitt and spilling both pints of Guinness down the front of their Guinness St Patrick's Day T-shirt.
While watching the sheep one day he heard a voice telling him to go to the coast and there would be a ship waiting for him to take him back to Britain but whoever the voice was, it obviously hadn't talked to the ships captain because he refused to take him but he used that English charm and eventually he let him on.
Once back in England he heard another voice telling him to join the Priesthood and go back to Ireland and covert the bally lot of them.
After finding an Irish port which wouldn't instantly run his intestines up a flagpole the second he set foot off the ship, he worked his way into Irish Hearts and on a few occasions used his head to stop Irish clubs, rocks and fists but his real fame came when he chased all the snakes off a cliff after they attacked him which is a bit of an exaggeration as Ireland had no snakes but they didn't know that, they looked around, saw no snakes and said 'Wow, thanks Englishman'.
If you are tempted to travel to Ireland to join in the festivities today, as the countries closest neighbour, we are best placed to pass on some valuable information about the Irish such as not to expose one to to direct sunlight as very bright red discoloration will occur and if you see an Irishman experiences trembling, administer liberal amounts of Guinness but most importantly never combine an Irishman with an Englishman as it may result in broken teeth.

Today Is...The First Ever FA Cup Final

The FA Cup came into life at the offices of The Sportsman newspaper when in 1871 a member of the newly established Football Association decided that: 'it is desirable that a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the Association for which all clubs belonging to the Association should be invited to compete'.
Thirteen games later and The Wanderers F.C. were whooping it up after beating Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London to win the first ever FA Cup and over the next 152 years a certain North London Team called Arsenal have won it the most times, 14, and that is pretty much all you need to know but as the challenge is to write a 'proper' post everyday for the whole 365 days, i'd better find a way to pad this post out.
As the FA Cup is a knockout competition, quite a few teams have been knocked out when it gets to the latter stages so football fans try to work out which rival team they object to the least and hold their nose and lend their tentative backing to the least annoying teams or whoever our favourite celebrity is supporting.
As if being an Aston Villa fan isn't bad enough, Tom Hanks has come out and displayed his loyalty for Aston Villa while US Ex-President Barack Obama has revealed he has a secret passion for West Ham.
And they are not the only Americans to have leanings towards a particular UK football team with Halle Berry and Sylvester Stallone supporting Everton although after his appearance in Escape to Victory, Everton fans expect that he passed on some tips to their goalkeeper.
Justin Timberlake and Brad Pitt risk being instantly disliked on sight by coming out for Manchester United but Arsenal are apparently very proud to list Kevin Costner, Jackie Chan, Freddie Prinze Jr, Spike Lee, Will Ferrell, Michael Moore and Dido among their celebrity 'Gooners'.
Apparently Bin Laden also used to attend Arsenal games before he turned his mind to other matters and as he has proved with everything he has recorded since 1987, Phil Collins is not afraid to put his name to a lost cause and is a firm supporter of Tottenham Hotspur, dedicating his singles 'Against All Odds' to Eric Dier's England Call up and 'In The Air Tonight' to sum up Harry Kane's penalty prowess.

Today Is...The Ides Of March

I always assumed it was Caesar who mentioned the ides of March but it was Shakespeare putting words into his mouth in his tragedy Julius Caesar.
Caesar was really warned to 'beware the Ides of March' which is the middle of March and Caesar was killed by his own Senators on March 15th so pretty accurate.
You don’t become a Roman dictator without at least some people wanting you dead and Caesar knew that enemies were plotting his overthrow and it was a soothsayer who actually said it, telling Caesar to beware the middle of the month so it was only really him who needed to beware those mid-month days, the rest of us are fine.
According to the writings of philosopher Plutarch, a soothsayer warned Caesar to be on his guard months before the assassination and on the day he was due to become an ex-Emperor, Caesar sought out the same soothsayer and told him: 'The Ides of March be come'.
'So be they,' the soothsayer responded, 'but yet are they not past' but that would make for a long play so Shakespeare condensed it and had him shrugging off the warning and going ahead with the Senate meeting where 40 of his Senators, fed up with his tyrannical behaviour, decided to do something about him and grabbed him and pulled down his Toga.
If that never got the point across that they were not best pleased with their Emperor, the fact that the follow up action was for forty of them to stick knives into his naked body definitely did.

Today Is...International Day of Mathematics

As it's the one day when all things Mathematical are celebrated, it is probably not the best day to admit that Mathematics and i have never had a very good relationship, i can't count the amount of times i failed Maths at school which has probably coloured my view that unless you are planning on becoming an engineer, architect, co-hosting Countdown or a Maths teacher, you can always get by with a basic knowledge of Maths.
When i cast my mind back to my school days, Michael J Fox was back in the future, Emilio Estevez was in the Breakfast club, Freddy Kruger was back in Elm Street and i was in Class 72 not listening to the Maths teacher tell us how important it was to learn the value of Pi.
Of course what the Maths teachers never told us was that unless we planned on sewing leather patches onto cardigans and becoming Maths teachers ourselves, 99.9% of us will never actually use Pi but that little gem is kept quiet because otherwise they will have to fill the time trying to explain long division or another thing i have managed to survive the decades since leaving school without ever contemplating using, calculus.
Anything more complicated than the basics stayed in my brain for as long as it took for the teacher to say them and i couldn't tell you Pi without googling it first and that's exactly what i would do if for some unfathomable reason i needed to know it.
I also spent a whole year making a clay jug and what practical use that is to a person in the world outside of secondary education i don't know unless you are unlucky enough to find yourself in a desert with only a lump of clay and a potters wheel and then you will be glad you didn't fake a period pain every Monday afternoon in that final year.
Never, since leaving school have i ever had to use Calculus or Pythagoras or been forced to scramble around in the dusty part of my brain for what pi is so as long as you have a working knowledge of the times tables, can divide, subtract and add and are able to find a percentage of something you will always get by and anyway that Mobile Phone you always have about your person will have a handy calculator app on it so don't fret.
Of course, as i mentioned earlier, this doesn't always apply especially if you are going into a career where maths is important such as co-hosting Countdown where you need a quick, mathematical brain to work out how to make 792 with four big numbers and two little ones.
Anyway, i was never any good at maths and it has never been a problem for me and it shouldn't be a problem for the majority of people but you kids should pay attention and listen to the Maths teacher because the chances of ever hearing anyone mention the word Pi again once you have left school is 3.14159265 or something.

Today Is...The Day Uranus Was Discovered

Before William Herschel became involved, the Solar System ended at Saturn but after his discovery there were seven planets floating around the Sun with us, but wow did he give it a bad name.
When i was in school, the seventh planet from the Sun was pronounced 'your-anus' but now it seems to have morphed into 'you-ranus' which isn't any where near as humorous, how can a schoolkid tell a teacher that he heard there was rings around 'you-ranus', that doesn't work at all.
I'm sure William Herschel knew what he was doing when the Astronomy society rejected the names he wanted for the planet, 'George's Star' or 'Georgian Planet' in honour of King George III, so vindictively plumped for Uranus after the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos, and forever being the butt of jokes for the rest of eternity, or until some killjoys decided to change how the name is pronounced.
The Royal bootlicker would be spinning in his grave if he knew what some people were getting up to when it came to Uranus despite the Oxford English Dictionary stating that it is pronounced 'yer-eh-nus' as in 'i think we need to explore Uranus' which will get any kid a detention at least if he said it to their teacher in Geography or Maths but is perfectly okay in Science.
As a serious and grown up blog, there won't be any of that here so let us put to one side the schoolkid humour and take a good, long look at Uranus and how important it is to study the gas that emanates from Uranus.
School children today are missing out on all this, i had my pronunciation of the planet corrected by a teenager the other day which shows that the fiendish plan to rename Uranus as 'you-ranus' is well advanced and the youngest generation will never know the joys of comments such as 'I'm researching Uranus' or 'there's a dark spot on Uranus' or even 'hey, did you know they found a new ring around Uranus' or even my personal favourite 'Dad, is Uranus bigger than Mars?'
So what if our interstellar visitors do come from the big blue gas ball, and we greet them as our visitors from 'you-ranus' and they have to embarrass us but saying actually they are from 'your-anus', red faces all around.
As anyone can see Uranus come into view on any given night, it is about time we reached out to it and fully experienced Uranus, i think we all need to carefully think about Uranus and watch it closely because for all we know Uranus could be crawling with life despite the noxious gases emanating from Uranus that could kill a man.
I suppose it makes things interesting when a scientist asks for funding to research the gas from Uranus but we all need to think carefully about Uranus and watch it closely because it is time that we all just acted more maturely and stopped making Uranus jokes, as i never tired of explaining to people, no man has ever been to Uranus and it should be something that we are probing thoroughly.

Immeasurably Cruel Opinions Not Just Preserve Of German Right Wing In '30s

Seems it wasn't just the Germans using abhorrent language in the 30s as this 1938 column from the Right-Wing Daily Mail shows.
With the headline 'German Jews Pouring Into This Country', the article warns of 'aliens entering the UK through the back door' and how 'stateless Jews and Germans are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage'.
The Home Secretary in 2023 said that 'illegal migrants pouring across the Channel every year, and in ever greater numbers' and that she would 'love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession'.
Seems the immeasurably cruel right wing in the 1930's wasn't just in Germany and the rhetoric today is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and the right wing over here ever since.  

Today Is...Aztec New Year

Did you know that you can reuse calendars?
In 2023, you can reuse calendars from 1989, 1995, 2006 and 2017 and if you keep this years calendar until 2034 you can use it then also but that wouldn't work if you follow the Mexica Calendar because that is divided into 18 'months' of 20 days each.
To anyone paying attention, that makes 360 days so the Aztecs came up with the idea of adding on 5 'nameless' days at the end of the year although these extra days are known as wasted days and they avoid doing most activities during these days.
As there are no leap years and the Earth doesn't conventionality travel around the Sun in exactly 365 days, the calendar does get out of whack so they introduced 13 extra extra days every 52 years to try and bring everything back together again.
That may sound overly complicated but ours isn't much better, 52 weeks split into months of 4 weeks 3 days, or 4 weeks 2 days one or 4 weeks exactly or 4 weeks and 1 day every four years, why not just have 13 months of 28 days with the leap years every 4 years still and 1 non-day day, like an extra bank holiday so a day which just doesn't count.
It makes sense to me to make it New Years Day and start the year with the 1st January the following day, it already has a name and it is already a Bank Holiday so no messing about with when to slide the extra free day in.
Every first would always be a Monday, every 28th would be a Sunday and every payday would always be a Friday although i'm sure calendar makers, Astrologers and people born on the 29th, 30th and 31st of any given month may kick up a bit but they will be outnumbered by the rest of us born on the 1st to 28th so we can ignore them.

Rishi To Decide On Stanley Johnson

 
Hard to know just what Boris Johnson's father, Stanley Johnson, has done to deserve a knighthood unless it is services to breaking lock-down rules when he travelled to his Greek Home while the rest of us was told to stay at home.
He does have experience in dealing with battered women, especially as his wife was one but in his defence he did say he only broke her nose that one time after he hit her which is one less than the number of times he has been accused of inappropriately touching women.
Admittedly these are not achievements that usually attract an honour which has annoyed those who do hold the honour already, arguing that admitting a man of the caliber of the wife beating, sexual pest Stanly Johnson to their exclusive club devalues there own knighthood but you never know, he may reflect on his
achievements and have the self-respect and integrity to refuse the honour in light of having done absolutely nothing to deserve it.   
That Boris even put his name forward is not unexpected, he has already bestowed an honour onto his brother and nobody ever lost any money backing Boris to do the wrong thing with no regard to the optics, when a man does not even know how many children he has you know you are in the presence of a man thicker than a nuclear bunker wall.
That Stanley fathered someone as wonderfully inept as his son Boris (obviously before the wife nose breaking days) should exempt him from any award whatsoever but over to you Rishi, it's down to you to rubber stamp the peerage for Boris's awful dad.

Team Lineker

I would like to start this post by stating categorically that i will not be presenting Match of the Day in solidarity with Gary Lineker. Not that anyone has asked me but if they did i would be joining the rest of the BBC Sporting fraternity who have sided with the presenter over their suspension of the former Footballer after his tweet where he said that the rhetoric coming from the Government over asylum seekers was not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 1930's.
Obviously it suits the Government and their supporters to keep the focus on Gary Lineker rather than their unworkable proposal which pretty much every Human Rights group has called immoral, unethical and illegal which follows on from the Number 10's rhetoric which was akin to the dehumanising, cruel and callous language of a part of society back in 1930s Germany.      
That Gary Lineker has generated such astonishing levels of vitriol from the usual suspects at the Tory front bench, the right wing media and their useful idiots who clutched their Union Flags, sang a chorus of Rule Britannia and then called for the Match of the Day presenter’s head as he was in breach of the BBC's impartiality rules for wrongly pointing out that the man who once represented England was comparing Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak to Hitler and the NAZI's which he never, he said the rhetoric being used to try and vilify anyone wanting to come to the UK was the same as was aimed at the Jews back then, and it blatantly is from the same play-book.  
After buckling to Government demands, the BBC have announced that Lineker would be spoken to about his duty to be impartial, although who would do the actual talking to hasn't been announced yet, possibly the BBC chairman Richard Sharp who donated over £400,000 to the Conservative Party or the Director General, Tim Davie, a card-carrying Conservative member, either of those politically impartial employees of the BBC could do it.
That's always been the problem with the far right, they hate it when you accuse them of being far right just because us more compassionate and sensible types don't agree with their unbalanced, simple minded and hate filled views.

Today Is...The Day Emperor Elagabalus Was Murdered

The boring thing about Democracy is that they almost never elect truly crazy people, some are voted in that are a bit weird and some that are borderline crazy but not 100%, out of their tree loopy.
Back when rulers took the throne based only on their bloodline, they let pretty much anyone be Emperor in those days and a nation could wind up under the rule of someone who was literally insane and Emperor Elagabalus is one of the most despotic, insane, perverted and cruel leaders Rome ever had, which took some doing considering the competition.
He was made the Emperor of Rome even though he was barely 14 and he did the typical teenage gnarly things such as holding feasts where he served live parrots, flamingo brains and mice and before each meal he would consult with a slave how each feast would go and by consult i mean rip open the slaves guts and 'read them' as they spilled out onto the floor.
Another favourite was to hide a lion in a room and tell his guests to go look at a statue or painting in there, those who survived the lion would join him for the feast, although the food could be a bit rock hard but that was because he would serve bits of wax and rock made to look like food and while they picked their teeth up off the ground he ate the real food.
To be fair, those that survived being mauled by lions, being pecked by parrots and avoiding slipping on slave guts, he gave them doggy bags which were actually bags with dead puppies in them.
He chained naked women to chariots and whipped them as they pulled him around the City and invented his own lottery so you could win a slave or a house or your dead pets, boxes full of bees or a poisonous snake.
Due to being an absolute Barnpot, the Senate first tried to remove him but he ordered them all executed so instead they just plain old grabbed him, chopped off his head and threw his body in the River Tiber which worked just as well.

Today Is...Anniversary Of The First Telephone Call

If you are watching a foreign language film and somebody answers the phone it always amuses me that they say 'Hello'.
Whether it's a Japanese, Chinese, South Korean or an Indian film, they all answer the phone with the same English greeting which must have really annoyed the inventor Graham Alexander Bell because he said it should be answered with 'Ahoy' which absolutely nobody took any notice of.
The first words ever spoken into a telephone were today in 1876 by the inventor who called his assistant, Thomas Watson, and said: 'Mr. Watson. Come here. I want to see you' which doesn't really seem inspiring enough for something which would become such a part of our lives years later, maybe if he had known just how important his invention would become he would have put a bit more thought into it especially as he had to keep repeating it whenever a new major connection was developed.
Graham Alexander Bell has gone down in history as the man behind the telephone but a working telephone had been demonstrated years earlier by Italian Antonio Meucci who filed a temporary patent on his invention called the Teletrofono but due to being sick and poor and Italian, he failed to send in the $10
necessary to renew his patent and two years later, Bell registered his telephone patent.
Meucci attempted to sue Bell for stealing his idea by retrieving the original sketches and plans he sent to a lab at Western Union, but these records, quite amazingly, disappeared which Bell said just proved he never sent them in the first place and he should know because he worked at the very Western Union lab where
Meucci swore he sent his original sketches.
Phones have come a long way since Bell urged his assistant to come and see him and sometimes the mobiles we all have are used to actually call someone but if nothing else that day in 1876 means we can go almost anywhere in the World and greet people and know we will be understood.

Today is... Publication Of Wealth Of Nations In 1776

As most of the Planet follow the Capitalist system, Adams Smith's book could be described as one of the most influential books ever written and it has undoubtedly reshaped the world and lifted people out of poverty over the last two centuries, increased standards of living and resulted in inventions that have
radically improved our lives but it has come at a cost.
Making a profit has become the over-riding philosophy to the detriment of society and with those with the most to gain from Capitalism making the decisions, Capitalism will not be replaced anytime soon but with a significant gap between the wealth of the richest and poorest people continuing to grow, it appears that the Books overriding theme that the motivating force of economic growth was selfishness has been widely undertaken.
The Smith analogy was that: 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest' which means that the Butcher is not selling you meat because he enjoys or wants to sell you meat, he is only doing it to make money and this desire to
make money benefited everyone as he spent this money hiring people and buying other things from people selling items and the money went around and everyone got a slice.
Smith's idea was being selfish and greedy is the key to satisfying everyone but while his idea of selfishness running the economy has been taken up with gusto, he did underestimate the pathetic self-regulating powers of mankind when it came to being self-serving.
He called it 'the invisible hand', an idea that even if corporations act like greedy dickholes, the market will always deal with them by itself without the Government butting in to regulate corporations, or tax the rich, or bother with commie bullcrap like welfare, so just sit back, and let the invisible hand sort it all out therefore proving Capitalism is just the tops.
Without doubt Capitalism filled the bank accounts of the top end while it empties those at the bottom and for the most beneficial recipients of the Wealth of Nations mantra, it's all fine and Capitalism works for everyone as long as nobody gets sick, grow old, are poor or underprivileged, lose their job or expect to eat decent food.

Tories Miss Open Goal Over Sue Gray

The Conservatives thoiuight they had Keir Starmer on the ropes over the hiring Sue Gray but then they went and ruined it by insisting that the report into Partygate she presented which not so much as pointed the finger at Boris Johnson but more poked him repeatedly in the eye was some sort of stitch up to remove
the Prime Minister.
They obviously got together top decide it because they are all saying the same thing without thinking it through that Starmer and Gray would have had to have arranged all the parties, made Boris attend them, arranged for a photographer and then remove the original investigator and manoeuvre her into a position to then write the report.
Then, the cherry on the cake was to ensure the cabinet then resigned on mass to force Boris out of No 10 and its job done which even for some of the Tories, must be a bit of a stretch but that's the idea they have hit upon and they will stick with it.
That one even called for her to resign shows just how across the moment they were, considering that is exactly what she did and took a job with the Labour Party but if they had thought about it properly, they could have had Labour dangling precariously as it isnt great optics that the woman who did such a hatchet job on the Government has not taken a job with the opposition, taking with her a big folder labelled 'Tory Secrets'.
That they never and completely missed the open goal, shows that they are as inept as we thought.

Ghosts Not For Me Thanks

I do like to watch the paranormal programmes on the TV which is lucky because there are plenty of them. I don't buy into there being ghosts and spirits  hanging around but i did have a thought last night while watching one team or another trying desperately trying to get some spirit to throw something around.
Since 2002 and Yvette Fielding began tramping around haunted castles and things with their cameras, never have they actually recorded one and neither have any of the other hundreds of teams doing the same all around the World.
Surely by now at least one of them would have taped something which wasn't a barely recognisable smudge in the vague shape of a person if you squint your eyes hard enough or a Electronic Voice Phenomena which is hardly audible.
Even if the professionals have not managed to catch anything, camera phones are everywhere so someone should have captured something but nope so great these types of shows are great for entertainment value but as for ghosts and spirits living in some sort of limbo beside us, until i see one for myself and i am not holding my breath, i will remain a skeptic.

Today is...International Women's Day

As i knew it was International Women's Day today and i would be asked a few thousand times by my male colleagues when International Men's Day was, i looked it up this morning so i could reply 'November 19th, enjoy it won't you'.
It is said that if you look hard enough you can find a good man in every corner of the World which falls down when you consider the Earth is round so that argument is flawed and while men can point to the many accomplishments they have achieved, women have given birth to every man that has ever been born so stick that in your man-bag and smoke it.
Anyway, today is the day that we celebrate all things with boobs and wombs but who are some of the most famous bra wearers in history?
Even though she would be 606 if she was alive today, Joan Of Arc would need to be included on any list which is remarkable when you think she didn't reach her 20th Birthday.
Anne Frank was even younger, a mere 16, but her tragically short life, cut short in a German concentration camp, is known throughout the Globe.
Queen's Elizabeth I and Victoria would have to gain a mention as would Russian Queen Catherine The Great and the cake eating Marie Antoinette.
From politics, the most well known would have to be Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher while Emmeline Pankhurst is truly deserving of a mention in any list of History's most famous women as would Rosa Parks who gained fame through a single bus trip home from work in 1955.
Literature has given us giants such as Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, the Brönte sisters, Enid Blyton, Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter and Amelia Earhart is known throughout the World as is Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale.
Double Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie work's contributed substantially to shaping the world of medicine and if all things where fair she would be the most famous women in history but if we use the criteria of most famous, meaning most well known, i would have to plump for the Egyptian Pharaoh Cleopatra who is responsible for more donkey milk baths than anyone in history. 

Today is...World Plant Power Day

When i first saw this one i misread it as Power Plant Day and was all ready to write a diatribe against Power Plants but then luckily i read it again and realised it was Plant Power to celebrate the benefits of sustainable eating and encourage everyone to embrace plant-based diets and as a Vegetarian i am all over this one.
It has been mentioned to me on more than a few occasions that Adolf Hitler was also a keen vegetarian. Whether these people expect me to then unveil a swastika armband and goose step around their lounge i have not worked out but the assumption is that if Hitler was evil, then vegetarians in general are evil also.
Turns out he wasn't vegetarian at all so i tend to turn it around and say actually, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Thomas Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Diogenes, Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates and Voltaire were all vegetarians while Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Vlad the Impaler, Caligula, George W Bush, Ivan the Terrible, Bin Laden and Genghis Khan where all meat eaters so you may want to revisit your list of the diet of evil doers.
Research does show that meat consumption is declining and the reasons given are due to an increase in the risk of heart disease, rising meat prices, increased awareness of cruel animal conditions, environmental impact of meat rearing and vegetarian celebrities such as Beyonce and Brad Pitt.
Vegetarians should stop being coy and grab the bull by the horn, or rather grab the fork off meat eaters, because we need to have a conversation about how eating meat is destroying the planet but carnivores can get a bit cranky when told to eat less of the wildlife, all that red meat coursing through their system i guess.
Obviously Governments cannot just ban meat and most people don't seem overly perturbed by the eyeballs and scrapings off the abattoir floor in their sausages and burgers, whining that they can't live on plants but you don't have to i reply while patting them on the head condescendingly, because now we can grow our meat!!
Products are starting to appearing on the market but the problem is getting meat eaters to give up the meat, especially when BSE, the horse meat scandal and various other livestock scandals have not made them switch.
We need sensible, grown up debate to bring across the masses so we are heading towards a World with more rice and beans eating Da Vinci's, Gandhi's and Plato's and less beef and pork eating Hitler's, Genghis Khan's and Idi Amin's so remember that you are what you eat. Enjoy that big, fat pig won't you.