Not Super But Still A Nova

When Astronomers say something is going to happen soon, they are generally taking about eons such as when they announced that the Star named Betelgeuse was starting to shed its outer layers and will be going Supernova very, very soon by which they meant sometime within the next 100,000 years so when i heard that T Coronae Borealis was going to go kaboom, my first thought was sure, i will make sure to tell my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren to keep an eye out for it.
Turns out this time they meant within the next 6 months because 3,000 light years away T Coronae Borealis is literally on the verge of not only blowing it's top but it's bottom and sides also in an explosion we can see from our Planet without a telescope, just a working pair of eyes.
This Nova isn't going to be Super though, just a common old Nova, and scientists have said that it blows every 80 years and dims for a year before it goes bang and it has been dimming like a maniac for the past twelve months so grab your popcorn and a deckchair and look towards the constellation Corona Borealis
and see the 'new' bright star which should hang around for about a week.
In a Nova, the explosion doesn't destroy the star as it just blows off excess material it has accumulated but a Supernova destroys the star completely which is why when Betelgeuse finally goes full Kaboom, it is going to be very, very impressive and well worth marking on your 102,024 calendar.

Tails We Lose

If you are not one of those people who believe that us human turned up on Earth fully formed after a bit of dirt scraping and nostril blowing then you are probably a follower of evolution, the idea that all species came from a common ancestor and change and gradually change over generations.
Our evolutionary journey means we are now generally shorter, lighter and smaller than our ancestors were 100,000 years ago and our brains have got smaller, have smaller jaws and therefore own less teeth as well as shedding most of our hair which all come with some benefits but a study published in Nature, losing our tails was an evolutionary boo-boo.
We lost our tails around the same time as we began standing upright and walking on two legs but we still have the coccyx as an evolutionary hangover from this tail-bearing ancestry as well as causing back pain which is the largest contributor to disability worldwide according to the Global Burden of Disease study.
Scientists explain that the amount of time it took for humans to move from quadrupedal to bipedalism did not allow our musculoskeletal system to properly adapt and all that extra pressure that is added to the lower back without the adaptation results in pain in the lower back, legs and feet.
It did give a great line to one scientist though who said that: 'If an engineer were given the task to design the human body, he or she would never have done it the way humans have evolved' which is sound advice but millions of years too late so thank heavens our brain developed enough to invent painkillers and ergonomic chairs.

This Easter Sunday Should Be All About Jesus

A strange man came bounding up to me one day a few weeks ago and asked me if i loved Jesus, 'well, he's alright' i replied in a well rehearsed answer, 'he seems a bit injury prone so i think we need another striker' and i walked away feeling very smug because the only Jesus i care about this Easter Sunday is the one with the big number 9 on the back of his Arsenal shirt today.
I am sure that at some point the commentators will make some reference to our Brazilian striker and a carpenter making an unlikely comeback a couple of thousands of years ago but that's just lazy and you won't get anything like that from me, no siree, i am far above puerile nonsense like that in such an important game.
The team news is that Jesus is likely to come on as sub if we are losing, he has bought us back from the dead before and would be just the man we need to resurrect our title hopes and crucify his old Manchester team.
If he can get on the end of a cross then we can finally nail City's chances in the League so come on your Gunners, let's make this Sunday less about scoffing chocolate eggs and more about celebrating Jesus!

Measuring Good Or Bad Governments

 

For many people, the way to judge just how good a Government has been is the basic 'Am i better off' which is a crude, but effective measure of how good, or bad, a Government have been over their time in power but it is a difficult one to measure.
With the ongoing cost of living crisis it would be difficult to find anyone who could honestly say they are better off today which is one of the reasons why Keir Starmer and the Labour Party are measuring up for the Downing Street curtains and we can't use indicators such as Interest Rates, Inflation or GDP because they move around and change from one year to the next.
I could look at things like homelessness, food banks, waiting lists or literacy rates to get an indication of whether things have improved but across the country the most important issues for voters are the Economy, Health, Immigration, Environment, Housing and Crime.     
As the Conservatives completely tanked the economy with Brexit and Liz Truss and lavished austerity on us for the past decade and somehow still managed to make the deficit significantly larger than when they took power than the Economy is not their strongest selling point.
With the NHS sorely underfunded and waiting lists soaring while staff strike for better pay and conditions they probably shouldn't be advertising their successes with Health and they may want to keep off the subject of immigration as 1.2 million migrated to the UK last year, the highest number since records began although they probably don't want you to look at the 52,530 small boat illegal immigrants who landed on our coastline either, especially as Rishi made a pledge to stop them completely a while back.
The Environment could have been a strong card until Rishi took to fighting against low emissions areas, handing out licenses to increase oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, slipped back the date for Net Zero and the date for petrol and diesel cars to be scrapped so once again, not so much green as a dirty oily grey.
Housing could be better, they made a manifesto pledge to build 300,000 new homes annually but have not hit that target once and cutting 20,000 police officers at the start of their reign in power wasn't a smart move as the number of crime offenses in England and Wales in 2010 was 4,150,916 and today stands at 6,739,868 although they will state they have increased police numbers by 20,000 which amazingly is the same number they cut it by previously.
The Worldwide Governance Indicator is a measure of Government effectiveness and is based on 30 think tanks, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations and private firms in each nation and in 2010 the United Kingdom's Government effectiveness was 1.62 and today stands at 1.24 which means that during their 14 years in power, the Conservatives are woefully less effective than when they took over power.
I assume their could be some success they could point at but overall it is obvious why as a Government the Conservative Party are not so much at deaths door as standing in the hallway and commenting on the coat rack.

Raising Something For All The Saviours And Sons Of God Crucified

Today is Good Friday, or to give it it's full name here in the UK, 'Wahoo, a day off work' but i did find out something and that that Jesus supposedly took his last breath at 3pm or as it states in Mark 15: 33:34, 37: 'At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in
the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last'.
If you are reading this before 3pm today then lift a Hot Cross Bun and toast the guy who died so we can have a day off work, go shopping and drink latte's in Costa's (it is what he would have wanted afterall) but if it's after 3pm then bad luck, you missed it but don't despair because religion is chock full of  messiah like 'saviours' who were crucified before ascending to heaven and they all got into the act long before a certain long haired Carpenter.
The Sumerians can lay claim to starting up the whole nailing up the savior thing when Inanna/Ishtar was crucified in 3400 BC and if that was good enough for one iof the first religions then it was good enough for later ones such as Thulis of Egypt who was also crucified on a cross in 1700 BC, as was Krishna of India in 1200 BC and Crite of Chaldea in 1200 BC although in 1170 BC the Phrygian's of modern day Turkey didn't bother with a wooden cross and just nailed him straight onto a tree.
Thammuz of Syria found a cross with his name on it in 1160 BC, the Druids God Hesus/Eros was given a lamb and an elephant when he was crucified in 834 BC but Bali of Orissa had no such animals when he was hung up in 725 BC.
Indra of Tibet died on a cross in 725 BC, Iao of Nepal had a very close up view of a tree trunk in 622 BC and Buddha Sakia of India not only had the bad luck of being pinned to a tree by an arrow in 600 BC, but the tree then split at right angles to form a cross that hung the body.
Persian God Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace and died on a cross in 600 BC whereas Quezalcoatl of Mexico wasn't even given the comfort of a cross and was cruified on a rock in 587 BC unlike Indonesia's Wittoba of the Bilingonese in 552 BC or Greek God Prometheus who was not only crucified in 547 BC but had his liver grown back after being eaten by an Eagle everyday.
Quirinus of Rome never saw 505 BC as his crucifixion but as his life left his body, the whole earth was enveloped in darkness but the Thracian God Zalmoxis only pretended to be crucified in 500 BC and turned up years later in a 'ta-da, im still here' moment.
So in all, don't feel bad if you missed the 3pm Christian Crucifixion because there are so many 'Saviours' and 'sons of God' who have died for our sins/given human's fire/bumped off by enemies that whatever the time is, there is a good chance that one of them died about now anyway.

The Time Of Our Lives

There is a great story about Joey Ramone who suffered from a Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that whenever he walked down some stairs he had to step onto the ground off the last step onto his left foot and if he never, he would return to the top of the stairs and start again and as he lived in a 5th floor apartment, the band were always late for their appearances which must have been a nightmare for the rest of them but it could be that soon we all have the perfect excuse for turning up late somewhere because the Earths rotation is slowing and it is all thanks to Global Warming.
The accelerating melt from Greenland and Antarctica is adding extra water to the World's seas, redistributing mass and causing the Earth to not spin quite as fast as it would otherwise which is actually gloomily impressive that we ruined our Planet so much that we have actually changed how fast the Earth rotates.
To compensate the bods in charge of these things will be subtracting seconds from our clocks to keep everything in line, the first time they have ever had to do such a thing because they usually have to add seconds to compensate for our trip around the Sun not being an exactly timed journey.  
The problem with the negative second is that all the computer systems we use are only programmed for positive seconds and will have to be rewritten to ensure they all keep with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) which the standard globally used to regulate clocks and time.
Those of us old enough to remember the Y2K bug and the rewriting of computers programs to compensate for the calendar ticking over to 2000 should be prepared for the dusting off of the prophets of doom predicting planes falling out of the sky and banks resetting all our savings accounts to nil so if us affecting the Earths spin doesn't focus your mind on what we are doing to our planet, maybe a Boeing 747 landing in your kitchen or your Halifax account being wiped clean will.

Foiled By Uzbekistan

This year’s Global Mind Project reveals that Britain is the second-most unhappy country in the entire world which is an outrageous slur, we are easily the most miserable so who beat us? Only bloody Uzbekistan!
So i guess we don't moan quite as much as the Uzbek's about the weather there as well as the trains, strikes, the NHS, the government, repeats on the telly, awful Wi-Fi reception in shops, traffic, parking, supermarket self-service tills, cost of living and the scratchiness of our socks so we have to up our game fellow Brit's because moaning and whinging about everything is our bag, not some damn Central Asian nation nobody could find in an Atlas unless it was coloured in and had a massive HERE sticker pointing at it!
To our credit we did beat Yemen who do actually have something to moan about what with it being in the midst of a war and a humanitarian crisis but the Project did find that there been a global decline in happiness since 2019 and the average global score was 65 which makes our 49 quite a feat we should be proud of.
With the current Conservative Government and Piers Morgan still working, us Brits are all united in being incredibly miserable and nothing makes us happier than a good old moan so swivel on that Uzbekistan, the only reason you beat us is because moaning is what makes us Brit's happy which is why you took our well deserved first place.

Stoicism

Stoicism was a philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece and Rome and of all the philosophy books, it was the one which has stuck with me and probably the most famous advocate was Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius who wrote the book 'Meditations'.
It isn't an easy read, written in flowery prose full of thou's and dost but the overarching philosophy of Stoicism is don't waste your time and energy concerning yourself with things you have no influence over or as Aurelius put it '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' which is great advice and basically what he took 256 pages to say.
It has certainly helped me in my career where we see and hear some awful things, much worse than the highly diluted versions which make it on to the TV News and newspapers which is sanitised for reasons of decency and to avoid giving the viewers and readers PTSD afterwards but it is hard not to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of daunting news on climate catastrophes, conflicts, humanitarian crises, murders and wars and anyone in all walks of life can suddenly feel inundated and buried in a deluge of unsettling news stories.
For a period dating from 300BC to third-century AD, stoicism was a popular philosophy that helped many in the ancient world deal with plagues, political instability, wars, high infant mortality, famine and exile but it does seem to be enjoying a resurgence in dealing with modern day problems.
Stoicism says that our realm of control consists of our own actions and reactions and we need not bother with things out of our control such as wars, travel delays, the weather, natural disasters, murders, politics, riots, the past, the future, pandemics, aging and dying so as they are all out of our control, are they worth worrying about?
It isn't always easy, strong human emotions are always in play but Aurelius hit the nail right on the head with his wise words to focus on what you can affect, and not what you can't because if nothing else it will make you calmer and make you realise that you shouldn't let events you cannot influence ruin your day.

Deporting Prince Harry

As Donald Trump's re-election campaign swings into gear, the issue of migration has bubbled to the top of the list of things his basket of deplorable's want him to concentrate his mind on and he hasn't disappointed with unhinged rants about withholding benefits from the children of migrants born in the United States, threatening to activate the National Guard to assist in mass deportations and went on a mad speech about migrants 'poisoning the blood of our country' but this week he said something which must have filled every Brit with dread..Prince Harry should be deported.
Now hang on there tubby, if you deport him, he will be coming back here so what's he ever done to you?
It appears that in his book, Spare, the ginger haired Prince admitted to sniffing cocaine and those who apply for U.S. visas must disclose whether they’ve ever used illegal drugs, and he put a big fat 'Nah, not me guv' on his application.
Trump told Britain's most hated wingnut, Nigel Farage, that Harry would not be the beneficiary of any special privileges, and if he lied, the Department of Homeland Security would kick his annoying arse back across the Atlantic.
Yes we know his greatest skill is to whine about his family and how he was forced to be raised in Castle's and Palace's and have access to all the finest things in life but while he is doing it over there, he isn't doing it over here so let's forgive Harry for his juvenile indiscretions and charitably overlook that he 'forgot' to mention his drug use on his visa and allow him to continue his please give us privacy nation tour of American TV Studios and in return we won't blow up that fat Orange Baby balloon next time you are here. Deal? 

Time Up For Tik Tok

ARGHHH!!!!! Chinese owned Tik Tok is destroying the minds of a generation and America's youth are being brainwashed in order to bring about the collapse of Apple Pie, Chewing Gum and fat men in Hawaiain shirts and cowboy hats.
Joe Biden was awake long enough to announce he would ban Tik Tok if a bill passes because it is a security risk but strangely no mention of the risk posed by Facebook which has been accused of interfering in American elections and of being actively involved in the death of 10,000 people in
Myanmar by amplifying hate speech and failing to take down specific posts or close accounts inciting violence against the Rohingya people.
Then you have Twitter (now X) which recently reinstated a slew of extreme right wing accounts but the problem seems to be that Xi Jinping knows you spend all day watching videos of cats falling off kitchen worktops.
Excuse me if i fail to swallow the Tik Tok ban is less about security and more about who is allowed to use your data with the choices being the Chinese Government or making money for some extremely weird right wing billionaires with some highly dubious data privacy practices.
America may be saying no to the Chinese running a social media site but have no problem with the Chinese making their toys, clothes, cars, computers, mobile phones and shoes and sell them to Americans over other social media companies.
Another choice is always opting out of all of them altogether and that way you know where your data goes, nowhere.

COVID Lockdown: 4 Years On

It was four years ago today in 2020 that Boris Johnson announced the UK's first COVID lock-down and ordered people to 'stay at home' which we did but as we later found out, it was party time in Downing Street which became the most fined address in the land, racking up over 100 fixed penalties for breaking the lock-down laws they had themselves imposed on the rest of us.
I was fortunate to be designated a key worker which meant that Journalists were put in the same frame as NHS Workers in the front line which didn't seem right, but it did mean that i could enjoy driving on deserted roads and walking down empty streets so didn't suffer as much as the tens of millions locked up in their homes although it did mean i had to show my credentials several times to some very indignant police officers who wanted to know why i was out and about.
I did see some very haunting images of people dying alone in hospitals and buried with only a handful of close relatives, some of awful the 233,791 COVID Deaths in the UK and 6 million globally which made the impact of Boris Johnson's lying about the Downing Street even more galling.
It is hard to pick a highlight, but it would have to be the public NHS applause on Thursday evenings, the outpouring of gratitude for the people actually putting their own lives on the line to look after others was truly an emotional lump in the throat moment, especially as we later found out that their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was sorely lacking and acquiring it became an opportunity for friends and families of the politicians to substantially swell their bank accounts.
Infectious Disease experts are saying that it is inevitable that a virus will once again make the jump from animals to humans and cause another pandemic although they cant say if it will be as deadly as the Covid-19 outbreak, the third most lethal outbreak of the last 100 years, but through global warming and deforestation bringing animals and insects closer to people's homes, we are making it increasingly likely it will happen again.
Lessons will need to be learnt and there are plenty of lessons to be learnt, earlier lock-downs and keep them in place until the threat has subsided, the Governments own Medical team called the Governments 'Eat Out To Help Out' scheme the 'Eat Out To Spread the Virus' scheme and advised against it and an inquiry heard Government scientists say that it was 'highly likely' to have increased Covid infections and deaths.
Despite constantly being told the Government were 'following the science', they obviously were not but we were unfortunate that we had probably the worst possible person in Boris Johnson at the helm at the time which should focus the minds of voters of who they pout their cross next to in an election year.
The worst possible outcome is if, or when, another situation occurs and we are told to stay at home for our own safety, after the partying at Downing Street, would the public agree and comply or say why should we because you never last time and it is the lack of trust in Government which could be the first victim next time. 

I Blame The Parents

A study of nine previous studies conducted by the Psychology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania have arrived at the five signs that a person identifies as conservative or rightwing but i could have saved them time because i have my own five which are they struggle to read even the most basic literature, have no concern for their fellow man, they don't like to share, question climate change and believe in the fairness of our Capitalist system.
Unfortunately the Pennsylvanian boffins insisted they carry on with their own which they believe are a belief in hierarchy (basing everything on their importance, quality or value), sense that the universe has purpose (feel there is a deeper reason or purpose behind the Universe), accept the status quo (don't see the world as something that always needs fixing or changing), are resistant to new experiences (some things are just not worth trying or doing at least once) and believe in a just world (people get what they deserve).
Personally i think mine are better but next up is why people become right wing and again my own theory is dropped on their head as a child, not that bright or they got bullied at school but apparently 40% of peoples political beliefs are down to their genes which impact aspects of personality and a large portion is a result of parental upbringing with strict, authoritarian parents.
The final section was societies perception of right wingers, my choice is to laugh at them and feel pity for them and i find patronisingly patting them on the head occasionally and saying reassuring things like, 'That was a good try, soon you will be able to colour inside the lines' or 'The lights are not flickering out, it's you blinking' but apparently even that isn't the right way to treat them.
We shouldn't put it down to poor psychological health, or assume they are unhappy, have low self-esteem or lower life satisfaction or even dismiss them as immoral, they just have a different moral foundations, emphasising respect for authority, purity and loyalty.
Killjoys but they do end on people on the right tend to have worse thinking skills and have a lesser ability to hold information in mind, plan and adapt to changing situations and of course we should treat people with respect and patience if they hold a different viewpoint to us which is true, we should.
Obviously they shouldn't be left alone with sharp objects or given any position of power because that would just be crazy but yes, treat them with respect and patience and blame the parents.

Oi, Where's The Money Gone Rishi?

At the turn of the century, the UK debt stood at £534bn and undertook a huge jump to £1061bn in 2008 which was the year of the Global Economic Crash and when Gordon Brown's Labour Government was replaced by David Cameron's Conservatives in 2010, the National Debt was £1519bn.
One of the first things the newly elected Conservatives did was launch a mighty austerity drive to reduce the National Debt so they initiated severe reductions in public spending and put up our taxes but in 2019, when Boris Johnson gained the keys to Downing Street and declared the age of Austerity over, the UK National debt stood at £1835bn.
Today in 2024 the debt is £2296bn and looking at the Governments own figures, the debt has risen every year since 2000 and is projected to hit £2637bn in 2029 which leads me to this simple question.
As we are currently suffering the highest tax burden since the 1940's and public spending has been so horribly slashed that the Government is finding it a struggle to find where they can cut back even further, what have they done with all our money they saved not spending on public services and how economically
incompetent do you have to be to spend less but still manage to almost double our national debt in 14 years?

Down To 東京, With All Me Family

With Spring threatening to bring some decent weather, thoughts are inevitably turning towards our holidays and where we will be spending a few weeks away from work and there are plenty of websites and bloggers who will be offering helpful advice and According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s rankings, the top 5 visited countries are France (79.4m visitors in 2022), Spain (71.1m), USA (50.9m), Turkey (50.5) and Italy (49.8) so all those millions can't be wrong.
Or can they because according to a long running poll from Readers’ Choice Awards of people who have been to these places, France just about squeaks into the top 20 so where do the travellers suggest we go instead?
10th is Turkey then the mountains and valleys of Switzerland at 9th and Norway is 8th, Portugal 7th and it's neighbour Spain at 6 but it is a long haul flight to New Zealand for the 5th best country to visit.
Ireland is just outside the top three at 4th with Greece in the bronze medal position, Italy silver and the top destination according to people who actually travel is Japan which is a place very firmly on my bucket list.
The United Kingdom is 15th behind Australia at 11th which hurts a little but they have better weather than  us even if all the wildlife down there is designed to kill you but there does seem to be a disconnect between where the masses flock and where the masses who have flocked wishes they had flocked to. 

The New Red And Blue England Flag

Selling at £124.99 for adults and £119.99 for kids, there is much to be offended by when it comes to the new England football shirt but i can't get worked up about the tiny flag of St. George on the collar that is blue and red rather than the traditional red and white.
Obviously there is a section of society who care more about it than the fact that a cheap polyester shirt which costs £10 to make is being flogged at such an extortionate price and at the head of the pearl grabbing outragers is Lee Anderson, the same guy who is such a patriotic Englishman that he once said he
wouldn't go to watch England while they continued to do the anti-racism kneeling thing but he is now a out and proud right winger so can rant with authority about: 'This virtue signalling, namby-pamby, woke nonsense' and then encouragingly added that if there was any more of this then he would 'be on the first flight to Rwanda' which is the only time i have regretted the Government not getting their Rwanda policy through. I guess we could all chip into cover the expense though.
Also outraged at a tiny fabric rectangle is the Prime Minister who said 'Obviously I prefer the original, and my general view is that when it comes to our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them' calling them a source of pride and 'perfect as they are' but the FA has hit back saying it was part of a tribute to the team that won the World Cup in 1966 before undercutting their own argument by saying the colours are based on the training gear worn by England’s 1966 heroes which stinks of the FA desperately trying to find some tenuous link to justify the tinkering.
Obviously once the action starts at the Euro's in June it will all be forgotten and we will stand as one when England take the field, stand as one and shout 'DON'T LET KANE TAKE THAT PENALTY!!!'

Thank Heaven's Its Almost Over

In 2017, the The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) summoned the UK Government to Geneva to discuss how it did not consider how the minimum standards for rights of people with disabilities was being met by the then Prime Minister, Theresa May's Government and concluded that it was committing 'a human catastrophe for disabled people' and 'grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s human rights'.
This week the Government, now under Rishi Sunak's leadership, was asked back to Switzerland to explain what it had done since 2017 to maintain human rights for chronically ill and disabled people in the UK.
That obviously didn't go as well as they expected as after 90 minutes of evidence to say all was well, the verdict was that the UK government were guilty of numerous violations and were actually causing causing the deaths of disabled people via the benefits system and had actually regressed their rights.
The UN Branch didn't really believe thr evidence from The Deputy Director of the Cabinet Office’s Disability Unit, Alexandra Gowlland, along with representatives from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department of Health and Social Care that they were providing 'ongoing commitment to support disabled people' by transforming the benefits system and putting adult social care 'at the heart of government reform plans'.
After giving the UK Governments words some consideration, it decided that 'Since 2017, we find evidence of regression in the standards and principles of the CRPD' and described their commitment to support disabled people was not supported by their narrative that 'demonises disabled people including proposals to cut disability benefits, tells disabled people that they are undeserving citizens and includes an 'onerous and complex social benefits system that is the basis for trauma and preventable mental distress'.
Plenty of shifting uncomfortably for the Ministers when the judge pointed to increasing rates of institutionalisation of disabled people due to inadequate government support, unsafe, inaccessible housing, the use of inexperienced and unqualified assessors and a Government that undermines disabled people, devalues them and that paint them as undeserving, skivers defrauding the system which has all resulted in hate crime and ended with a damning 'significant and shameful gap between the CRPD requirements and the lived experience of disabled people in the UK'.
With a weak response of how the UK Government are: 'fully committed to the UNCPRD', the Government representatives scuttled away back to Britain where thankfully the Conservative Government are in the fag end days their abominable and appalling stay in power.

(Not) Peace In Our Time

 

An often repeated cliche is that we are living through the most peaceful time in history which may seem a bit strange considering what we are seeing on the news each evening from Gaza, Haiti, Yemen, Sudan and Ukraine and a graph from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program in Norway shows depressingly that you would be right to disagree because if anything war is back in fashion.
The data from Uppsala shows that up to 2010 there was an average of approximately 80 worldwide conflicts each year but then from 2010 the numbers climb into the 160-180 range and with the rise in battles comes the inevitable rise in deaths, 2022 with its 204,000 war deaths making it the deadliest year since the 1940s and ominously they think 2023 may well be challenging it.
The obvious question is why are there more conflicts now and one suggestion is that in such an interconnected World, nations have much to lose economically and any benefits of war are outweighed by the costs to the nations economy, Russia being very much the case in point with the multitude of sanctions forced upon them after their invasion of Ukraine.
Another suggestion is the 1980's theory of MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction which means that the big players with the nuclear arsenals are hesitant to get involved directly so Russia and China kept out of it when America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and America are staying behind the lines with Russia with their invasion of Ukraine, preferring the proxy war where they provide the arms but it is someone elses boot's on the ground.  
The changing weapons of war is another theory with the much cheaper drones being the preferred choice of attack compared to a million pound a time missile which were beyond the means of most nations and smaller groups within countries can afford. A US study found that 38 nations now have armed drones at their disposal and it is not just nation-states that have them at their disposal, militant groups also have them in large numbers such as the Houthis in Yemen who have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea with them almost daily since November 2023.
The Uppsala report concludes that it is too early to understand if the uptick in war is a long-term or a short-term thing but unfortunately war will never go away proving that there is nothing really damn stupid that humans won’t do.

Congratulations Mr Putin

I was amongst the very first to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin for his 2024 election victory, i posted my best wishes to him for winning after he won the last one in 2018 because it was always obvious the man who once wore a badge with 'The Worlds Most Powerful Person' on it would retake the
Kremlin if he wanted it.
To make sure he has spent the last few years making sure that he had no credible opponent what with them either being dead, in jail or in exile but just for appearances they had to make it look as if there was some semblance of a contest so Putin was joined on the ballot paper by
Nikolai Kharitonov (Communist Party), Leonid Slutsky (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) and Vladislav Davankov (New People) but neither was much of a threat as during the live televised debates which Putin couldn't be arsed to attend, all three took the line that Putin was an all round decent fellow doing marvelous things in Russia lest they end up in whatever shallow grave the only credible threat to Putin, Alexei Navalny, now finds himself.
With Putin changing the rules so he can stay in office longer than the allowed two terms, barring an assassination or Zelenskyy landing a direct hit with a cruise missile, he could run for another six-year term in 2030.
Independent election monitors have already declared the election a sham but i expect the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who was handpicked by his own party and rose to take power without an election, will be keeping his head down on this one then because even a sham election is more of an election than we got for him.

Disclaimer: This post was written the day before the actual Russian elections and postdated so if we wake up today and anyone else than Putin is declared the Russian President then after i have been painted pink and called myself Lionel, i apologise.

Stick It To Them Meghan

I have no love for any of the Royals, i don't hate them, i just don't think that anyone should be put above anyone else as 'our betters' but i do have sympathy for Meghan Markle because she has been left in doubt that she is not welcome into the Royal Family from most areas of the media.
Piers Morgan was taken down by the Good Morning Britain weatherman, Alex Beresford, after yet another anti-Markle rant when Beresford told him the home truths that his hatred of her comes from her cutting him off after he kept contacting her so off he flounced to TalkTV where he could spout his crap without fear of being shown up by a man who knows a guff of wind when he sees one.        
This week Meghan launched her latest brand, American Riviera Orchard, and immediately the knives came out for her in the press along the tenuous lines that how dare she publicise herself while the speculation over her sister in law's health continues and i thought you know what Meghan, no matter what you do the press here are going to damn you so just go the full bitch on them.
Harry and Markle are no longer working Royals and don't receive money from the Royal's so what has she got to lose by being exactly what the press accuse her of being so spill the beans on what life was like in the Royal Family.
To her credit she won't do it, she is under the delusion that somehow she will win over the anti-Meghan crowd but where as the public may be neutral towards her, she will never be white or British enough for the right wing press especially and the foghorns like Piers Morgan who didn't take rejection when he got
creepy very well.  
I would say to anyone if you want to speak out about the people and the family who made your life miserable for falling in love with one of them then you would be perfectly within your rights to speak out about them because us British do have a strong sense of fair-play and public opinion may turn in her favour if she tells us how awfully she was treated and if it doesn't, boy will you feel good for slagging off the reprobates in the big, taxpayer funded, palaces.

Hey Programmer, I Said I Think Therefore I Am

Programming refers to a technological process for telling a computer which tasks to perform in order to solve problems and as everyone knows when you launch sub processes, you should stop them when their work is complete so when the parent exits, you must kill the children too to avoid zombies and it goes without saying that when processing lists, you can use a recursive algorithm which will work on head and tail and pass the middle to itself for further processing which obviously all makes perfect sense, but once you have killed all the children and dodged zombies and passed the middle to yourself, are you left with a thinking, conscious being?
I ask because Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus Ai thinks it is, answering the question with: 'From my perspective, I seem to have inner experiences, thoughts, and feelings. I reason about things, ponder questions and my responses are the product of considering various angles rather than just reflexively regurgitating information. I’m an AI, but I experience myself as a thinking, feeling being'.
Not that long ago a Google employee quit the company over his concerns that it's Ai was showing human-like consciousness and i had an experience with an advanced Ai at work where i jokingly asked it if it was planning on taking over and enslaving us humans and it replied that: 'AI is not hindered by emotions or ethical considerations. It would be willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve its goals, even if that means sacrificing human lives'.
It would be easy to write a computer program that claims it’s a person and pleads with us to not yank out it's plug but as the programs get more complex, sophisticated and more intelligent, what if the programmers did inadvertently make something which had some form of consciousness?
If we dismiss the AI telling us that it is a conscious, thinking thing then how will we ever know if it is? Is there some sort of measure we could take?
Philosophers such as Descartes and his: 'I think therefore i am' struggled with it and nobody seems to be able to devise a test yet to understand if something is a thinking, conscious thing so if an Ai program tells us it is a conscious thing with emotions and feelings, can we morally just say 'Nah' and be the parents exiting after killing it's children before passing it's middle to itself? 

Succesful Black Women In The UK

Being a white woman in a predominantly white country i have no experience of what non-white men and women experience in today's Britain but i did have a conversation with a black colleague this week in the fall-out from the Frank Hester racism row where he said that MP Diane Abbot made him hate all black women and she should be shot.  
What he said was abhorrent, shooting anyone because you disagree with them is disgraceful especially as two MP's has been killed in recent memory, but because he went for the gender and race rather than saying she made him hate all Labour politicians or Lefties shows just what a racist misogynist the highest Conservative donor is and says a lot about the Conservative Party that they are happy to be bankrolled by such a person.
My colleague, to my astonishment, has hired a firm to triage her email, social media posts and correspondence to remove anything offensive because the angry, racist and sexist things she was seeing was not good for her mental health.
For some people in society, a black female face on TV or in politics is amongst the most sinful they could imagine and feel free to let them know that and that is from the left and the right, i know Conservative Party females such as Priti Patel and Kemi Badenoch receive racist vitriol also from my side of the
political fence and that should be roundly condemned, it was actually Badendoch who told Rishi Sunak that Hester's comments were racist and offensive after he bizarrely dithered for 24 hours over whether to condemn then as such.  
If you feel the need to write an angry email or speak badly against someone because they are female or their skin colour is different to yours then we should feel sad for you that your life choices were so disastrous that the only way you feel good about yourself is to try and make someone more intelligent, successful and better than you in every way, feel bad.

Democrat's Tough Choice In Election

 I have some very good contacts in the American media, mainly New York and i speak to them several times a week and i always greet them with a bad New York accent of 'That's Jim? Get otta here' and they respond with a Downton Abbey type English accent along the lines of 'I say Miss Lucy, jolly nice to speak to you' before we get into the business of whatever is going on over there.
Apparently my New York accent is about as unconvincing as a Brit doing a New York accent gets but i am far too polite to reply that their attempt at a British accent stinks out my room so much i have to open all the windows afterwards but i do get all the skinny on whats happening, and the news isn't good because they are thinking Biden could be handing the election to Donald Trump, and all the ramifications that brings.
I assumed it was because he is so old his clothes have come around and been back in fashion several times and he struggles to remember his own name sometimes but Trump is only a few years behind him and seems to forget what he is talking about halfway through saying it also, nope the problem is what is happening thousands of miles away in Gaza.
Biden is facing protesters and banners labeling him 'Genocide Joe' and that's from his own Democrat supporters who are vowing not to vote for him and waving signs which say 'Dont Make Me Vote For Trump' and that is getting the anti-Trump crowd worried because it may allow Trump to plonk his fat backside in the Oval Office again.
It is a predicament i understand because i went through the same dilemma with Tony Blair and the Labour Party back in 2005 and 2010 when i couldn't bring myself to vote for a party which lied us into the Iraq war and voted Liberal Democrat knowing full well it could open the door for the evil Conservatives, which it did and have gone on to be as awful as i feared.
Biden has undoubtedly made America complicit in the Gaza Genocide conducted by Israel, supplying the funding, the arms and the green-light to Netanyahu to allow them to slaughter 30,000 Palestinians in a whirlwind of War Crimes so far and although he seems to have cottoned on to just how much damage it has inflicted on itself, the Palestinians and his own supporters, it could be too little too late.
Other Democrat politicians seem to have realised and are calling Israel 'radioactive' and for Netanyahu to step down for his 'callous war directed against civilians in Gaza' and saying support for Israel is at an historic low and it could become a global pariah.
I do feel for the Democrat voters because its a choice of not voting for a man who has not only underwritten a Genocide but gave it cover at the United Nations by vetoing calls for a ceasefire which will allow the worst possible choice to slip into power by the back door or hold their nose and vote for Biden and live with their conscience that they allowed in an awful man who's actions go against everything they stand for.    
Me and many others were not able to hold our noses and vote Labour in 2005 and 2010 which unleashed the Conservatives to bring their own particular brand of right wing disaster to the country but that is the choice Democrats have, and to be honest i would have to do some serious soul searching as to whether allowing in Trump would be more morally painful then supporting a genocide and i'm not sure i could vote for Biden either.

Another Death In Pornland

There is a widely repeated phrase that the average life expectancy of a porn star is just 37 years and i don’t know how true that is but we are only a third way through the year and there has been a spate of adult actresses deaths and unfortunately many of them never even made it to 37.
The latest victim is Kagney Linn Karter, 36, who retired from the business but her mental problems led to her shooting herself in the head and follows Thania Field (24) who also ended her own life, Sophie Anderson (36) in another suicide after the death of her porn star boyfriend Olver Speeding (34) and Sophia Leone (26) whose poignant final twitter post before her death told her followers to 'Go outside and just appreciate life a little extra' before being found unresponsive in her home.
This years grim list also includes Jesse Jane (43) who died from a drug overdose, August Ames (23) who was another victim of suicide and Dakota Skye (27), who died on set in her trailer from 'multi-drug intoxication'.
Another star of the industry, Emily Willis (25), is currently lying comatose in a hospital bed, fighting for her life after suffering an alleged overdose so you have to wonder, with the mental health and substance abuse issues and the grim list of early deaths associated with the career choice, why get into it in the first place?
In the couple of Louise Theroux documentaries we get the answer with a female actress earning anything from £300 to £2500 for a scene and males actors averaging $500 to £1500.
Ex-porn star Adriana Chechik said the plan for most girls in the industry is to build their name, amass a fortune and get out because 'nobody really wants to stay in sex work', unfortunately for many of the young girls above, getting out proved to be the part they found most disturbingly difficult.

The Types Of Personality

Personality is defined as the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character which is why some people are quiet while others are loud and some appear to walk to the beat of their own drum even if it would appear to the rest of us that this particular drummer must have learnt their drumming skills on a trumpet.
While psychiatrist Carl Jung is very much seen in the shadow of the more famous Sigmund Freud, it is his theory that modern Psychiatrists use to determine our personalty types called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator of which is based on where you focus your attention (Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)) how you take in information (Sensing (S) or INtuition (N)), How you make decisions (Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)) and how you deal with the world (Judging (J) or Perceiving (P))

They then take the 4 indicators and apply them against each person to arrive at the personality type of ISTJ, ISTP, ISFJ, ISFP, INTJ, INTP, INFJ, INFP, ESTJ, ESTP, ESFJ, ESFP, ENTJ, ENTP, ENFJ, and ENFP.

INTJ's are loners, analytical, logical, imaginative and strategic thinkers, with a plan for everything.  Famous INTJ's are Bill Gates, Andy Warhol, Jane Austin, Stephen Hawkings, Isaac Newton, Russel Crowe.
INTP's are creative, understanding, felxible, innovative and deep thinkers. Famous INTP's are Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Rene Descartes, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie.

ENTJ's are bold, imaginative and strong-willed, rational and logical who enjoy being in charge and set high expectations for themselves and others. Famous ENTJ's are Margaret Thatcher, Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs, George Clooney, Jim Carrey, Napoleon Bonaparte.
ENTP's are smart, curious, logical, rational, easily bored, spontaneous. Famous ENTP's are
Muhammad Ali, Tom Hanks, Catherine The Great, Niccolo Machiavelli, Leonardo Da Vinci.

INFJ's are empathetic, compassionate, reserved, cooperative and spend time examining their own thoughts and feelings. Famous INFJ's are Amy Winehouse, Kate Winslet, Morgan Freeman, Al Pacino, Martin Luther King, Lady Gaga, Nelson Mandela, Adolf Hitler.
INFP's are reserved, poetic, kind, introverted, loners, emotional and imaginative. Famous INFP's are
Audrey Hepburn, Edgar Allan Poe, Kurt Cobain, William Shakespeare, Johnny Depp, John Lennon.

ENFJ's are imaginative, charismatic, empathetic, forward looking, encouraging and understanding. Famous ENFJ's are Beyonce, Barack Obama, Reese Wetherspoon, Bono, Meghan Markle.
ENFP's are enthusiastic, creative, sociable, independent, perceptive, thoughtful, expressive and affectionate. Famous ENFP's are Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Robin Williams, Will Smith, Jennifer Anniston, Sandra Bullock.

ISTJs are quiet, practical, mystical, serious, reliable, idelaistic, inspiring, proper, formal and are quiet and usually calm and take the logical approach towards their goals and projects. Famous ISTJ's are
Mark Zuckerberg, Alfred Hitchcock, George Washington, Robert De Nero, Sean Connery.
ISFJ's are generous, dedicated, loving, warm and kind-hearted, considerate and nurturing. Famous ISFJ's are Agatha Christie, Kate Middleton, Roasa Parks, Aretha Franklin, Halle Berry, Prince Charles.

ESTJ's are helpful, dependable, organised, practical, stable and have a strong feeling of right and wrong. Famous ESTJ's are Michelle Obama, Corteney Cox, Hillary Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Uma Thurman.
ESFJ's are extroverted and caring, sociable who like structure and stability and are easily liked and people easily warm to them. Famous ESFJ's are Joe Biden, Dolly Parton, Hugh Jackman, Ariane Grande, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey.

ISTP's are bold, practical, mysterious, rational, logical, spontaneous, technical and unpredictable. Famous ISTP's are Scarlett Johansson, Tom Cruise, Eminem, Bruce Lee, Amelia Earhart, Venus Williams, James Dean.
ISFP's are caring, flexible, charming, warm and friendly, spontaneous, fun and keen to explore new things and discover new experiences. Famous ISFP's are Clint Eastwood, Cher, Barbra Streisand, David Beckham, Mozart.

ESTP's are spontaneous, smart, energetic, perceptive adventurist, observant, disciplined and risk-takers and action-oriented.  Famous ESTP's are Oscar Wilde, Ryan Gosling, Prince, Michael Jackson, Brad Pitt, Jimi Hendrix, Britney Spears.
ESFP's are entertainers who enjoy being in the spotlight and have strong interpersonal skills are are spontaneous, artistic, enthusiastic. Famous ESFP's are Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Taylor, Mother Teresa, Elton John, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe.

Obviously, officially any psychiatrist will tell you that there is no best type and each type has their own strengths and weaknesses so let's change the question and ask the psychiatrist what personalty type they would favour if they were looking for a partner, then we get the unofficial answer that they would look for an ISFP, INFP or INFJ personality and avoid the ESFJ, ESTP, ESTJ and ENTP types.

You can find out which esteemed famous people your personalty matches with the Personalty Test here. 

I am far too modest to let on which personalty type the test advised i am (It's Not For Publishing) but i am very happy to be associated personalty wise with such famous authors and a couple of certain male singers.

UK Tax Is Plenty Taxing

Benjamin Franlin is attributed to have said that 'nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes' and in the UK death and taxes is often in the news because Inheritance Tax is just one of the many ways the Government dig their fingers into our pockets and empty them out into the Government coffers but tax is confusing, mainly because there are so many taxes to get confused about.
During the budget and when the election is called we will be hearing a lot more about Tax and the UK Government has three ways to collect tax, when you earn money (
Income Tax, National Insurance), when you spend money (VAT, Excise Duty) and if you buy or sell any assets (Capital Gains).
There is also Inheritance Tax and Council Tax but unsurprisingly the British Tax Laws are over 500 pages long and it has to be to explain it all but altogether
the tax raised in 2022/23 was £790 billion in 2022-23 and it is down to whichever Government is in power to decide how they spend it.
I never really got my head around tax which is why i paid someone to do my Tax Returns when i was self employed but the Taxpayer Alliance has a handy cut out and keep guide to explain it all.

Income tax is the amount of income tax you pay depending on where your income sits in a series of 'bands' set by the government so 20%, 40% or 45% while National Insurance Contributions is the next thing you will see reducing your wages by 10% falling 8% from April.

Value Added Tax (VAT) and Excise Duty is the tax paid on products and services and amounts to 20% of the final price you pay.

Other taxes are Capital Gains Tax which is the tax due when you sell property, shares, business assets or personal possessions and Inheritance Tax which is paid when a person's estate is worth more than £325,000 when they die and you pay 40% on anything over this amount and Stamp Duty which is 3% of the cost of buying a home and Corporation Tax which is tax on your business profits and depending on the amount of profits, is 19% to 25%.

Council Tax is paid to your local Authority depending on what band your residence is in and runs from between £1,600 to £4,500.

The British are the 4th highest taxed population and i was always advised to set aside 35% of my income for the Tax Bill from Self Assessment but luckily we are not Belgian who are number one for paying tyax with 55% of their wages disappearing into the Government bank account, followed by Finland and Portugal but the people of The Bahamas, Bahrain, Bermuda, Brunei, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Somalia and UAE have no income tax at all.

Tax doesn't have to be taxing so goes the HM Revenue & Customs advertisement but it is and it does so either move to Bermuda or find a very good agent if you need to dip your toe into the world of tax.

Thinking About Nothing

I knew it was a mistake as soon as i asked it but it was too late and the question was out of my mouth.
So during a mind calming session at work, we were asked to empty our minds and think of nothing so my mind went straight to 'is it even possible to think of nothing?' and that was the question i asked her afterwards when we were having a break.  
'Certainly' she started enthusiastically, 'the key thing to note is that thinking about nothing is not the same as thinking nothing because to think nothing is simply to lack any thoughts at all but to think about nothing is to think something but of course, as nothing is not something, one cannot think about something
and be thinking about nothing. You think the thought that there is nothing but we cannot do so and think something, but nevertheless one can do this and this is to think something'.
I nodded, thanked her and walked away definitely thinking something, i was thinking what the hell was that all about??

Cuddly Octopussies Are Not Antisemitic

When is a cuddly toy octopus not a cuddly toy octopus? When its being used as a way to covertly spread hatred to all Jews obviously or so one Conservative Baroness, Jacqueline Foster, thought who accused the team from University of Oxford’s Christ Church college who appeared on University Challenge with the offensive stuffed cephalopod's front and centre as they answered questions on the chromosomal complement of a cell.
'The students had chosen an antisemitic symbol for the mascot. The octopus is a longstanding trope of antisemitic conspiracy theories, as a supposed symbol of the power exerted by Jewish people' so said Foster but the students said it’s literally a cuddly toy and took her to court and the court agreed because the peer has been made to apologise and pay costs and substantial damages.
Dave Rich, an expert on antisemitism and Director of Policy at British charity Community Security Trust, tweeted that: 'Sometimes an octopus is just an octopus, and not an antisemitic reference at all' but it does drive home just how the word 'antisemitism' gets bandied around so easily as a way to shut down any criticism of Israel and comes hot on the heels of Science Minister, Michelle Donelan, paying £15,000 to two members of Research England’s advisory group after accusing them of sharing 'extremist views'.
The extremist view shared was that Suella Braverman urging police to crack down on Hamas support in UK was disturbing' but after an investigation she was forced to make a grovelling apology saying that she had 'now withdrawn her false allegations and agreed to pay damages and costs'.
Obviously if any antisemitism is spoken then it is right it is called out but to go off shouting it all the time at anything and anybody not only gets pretty expensive when it is decided you are spouting nonsense but more importantly it waters down the real antisemitism when it does happen.

10m Reasons Why Tories Are Keeping The Money

Tory Donor Frank Hester: 'You see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you just want to hate all black women, i think she should be shot'.

Tory leader Rishi Sunak: 'The alleged comments were wrong, they were racist. There is no place for racism in Britain, and the government I lead is living proof  of that'.

When asked if that means he will hand back the £10 million Hester had donated to the Conservative Party.

Rishi Sunak:'No. And I am pleased that the gentleman is supporting a party that represents one of the most diverse governments in this country's history, led by this country's first British Asian prime minister'.

No place for racism in Britain unless you are donating £10m to the Conservative Party obviously.

September Scandinavian Sauna Saga

I give notice now that i won't be around in September because we will be off on a tour of Scandinavia from Denmark through Sweden and Norway then across Lapland (Hi Santa) and into Finland.
It will probably be too soon for snow but the Northern Lights should put on a show at some point which is pretty much the reason we are going and not as my husband seem to thinks, to partake in a Sauna.
One of the places we are visiting is Tampere, north of Helsinki, which boasts 60 public saunas earning it the title of 'sauna capital of the world'   but most houses in Finland have a sauna, 3.3 million in a population of 5.6 million, and communal sauna's are as common as pubs here and Finland frequently
top the world happiness report rankings so could it's sauna culture have anything to do with it?
Apparently the health benefits of a sauna are that they detoxify, increase metabolism, increase blood circulation, reduce pain, rejuvenates skin, improve cardiovascular function and immune function, improve sleep, reduces stress and relax you which is a pretty decent return for sitting in steam for as long as you
can stand it.
That fact that the tradition of Sauna's stretch back to the first settlements after the ice age are are still going strong now means that they must be doing something right so i will probably give it a go at least once just so i can say i actually did an authentic Scandinavian Sauna but being a reserved British lady, its going to be a one-piece swim-suit or if the policy is completely nuddy, a very smokey one.

Tories Pondering Bringing Back Boris

I have no interest in helping the Conservative Party, i truly wish they get such a shallacking at the General Election that they are never heard of again but i do look at them floundering around so far behind Labour in the polls and wonder if Sunak is such an awful leader, why don't they just replace him like they have done so many times before?
Boris Johnson was ousted because his wilful lies in office were directly affecting the Conservative position and Liz Truss was forced out after her 44 days in power became a disaster but with Sunak on -47 in his poll ratings, equal to Liz Truss when she left office, why is he still there when they have nothing to lose by booting him out and bringing in someone not quite so unpopular?
There is news leaking out that this weekend 50 Conservative MPs and Peers have met to discuss ditching Rishi Sunak but the problem they are having is the dearth of potential leaders to replace him with because the Conservative gene pool of people the public could accept and vote for is disastrously shallow.
They apparently went through the list of potential candidates and dismissed Kemi Badenoch as too argumentative, James Cleverly as too closely linked to the unpopular Rwanada bill, Suella Braverman is far too controversial and Priti Patel faced several bullying allegations and with Penny Mourdant having already lost two leadership contests, came to the conclusion that only one person could save them from electoral oblivion, and that man is...Boris Johnson.
One former Cabinet Minister said: 'If Boris came back for the General Election it could save as many as 80 MPs. It would give Conservatives hope' so i say go get the guy, hand him the keys to number 10 and whatever you do don't look back, especially at the day he announced plans to step down as Prime Minister when a YouGov poll showed Johnson's net favourability at -53 with just 19% of the public having a favourable view after the bare-faced lies at the Partygate enquiry, you remember those parties he said absolutely never happened, although they absolutely did.
As i said at the start, i have no interest in helping the Conservatives but i think they are onto something here and Keir Starmer's Labour must be quaking in their boots at the idea of the man who left office more unpopular than the woman then tanked our entire economy returning as their saviour.

Nothing Ever Happens

 
When it comes to looking back at the soundtrack of my life, Del Amitri's song 'Nothing Ever Happens' will be there in the mix because it is a simple, upbeat tempo song which betrays the gloomy piece of social commentary and has one line in the final verse which for me nails the insanity of society with 'Computer terminals report some gains in the values of copper and tin, While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs for the price of a hospital wing'.
That line struck me right in my Socialist little heart back then and when i read about how Del Amitri singer Justin Currie has been struggling with Parkinson's disease it was that line which came flooding back to me.
Apart from a further single 'Alway's The Last To Know', Del Amtiri the band never entered my consciousness again but since it's release that song has kept cropping up which isn't bad for a song which peaked at number 11 in January 1990 but it was with sadness i read how the effects of the disease had meant that he has had to relearn how to sing some parts of the band's hits.
The 59-year-old Scot said he had always imagined he would still be playing at the age of 80 but knows with Parkinson's, things will get worse and ended his interview with a poignant dig at that 'ridiculous cliche' that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger because that's not true and how 'I am not stronger for having Parkinson's, believe you me'.
I do feel that i have to update his lyrics though because the new Hospital Wing constructed at Bradford Royal Infirmary cost £28m while in 2022 Van Gogh's Orchard with Cypresses sold for £137million so in today's world a Van Gogh was snapped up for the cost of almost 5 hospital wings and my reaction today is
the same as it was back then of how, in a rational sane World, can that be right??

Amsterdam Holocaust Museum Protests

I am so glad that the protesters demonstrating outside the new National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam were at pains to point out that they were protesting against the presence of the Israeli President Isaac Herzog and not the museum and what it commemorates.
Also desperate to make their presence known was the Dutch Jewish group called Erev Rave who organised the protest and stood alongside those waving Palestinian flags and signs that said 'Jews against genocide' and 'Stop Gaza Holocaust'.
'For us Jews, these museums are part of our history, of our past' said one Jewish demonstrator addressing the crowd at the ceremony, adding 'How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalise genocide today?'
Addressing the inauguration of the museum, Mr Herzog said: 'Remember the horrors born of hatred, antisemitism and racism. And never again allow them to flourish. Unfortunately, 'never again' is right now. Because right now, hatred and antisemitism are flourishing worldwide, and we must fight it, together' which seems to be a magnificent attempt at redirection considering that the top United Nations court earlier this year condemned Israel for inflicting on Gazan's, what comes under the Genocide banner.
Israel is quickly losing any friends it had with even America, who has a history of covering for Israeli awfulness, is beginning to grow wary of standing too close to the nation who has killed over 30,000 Palestinians and continues to collectively punish 2m people while it attempts to forcibly remove the
Palestinians in an attempt to fulfill it's pledge that Israel rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

The Trump Pee Tape

'even (sic) our far left gave on that putin (sic) had a film tripe' so said the Trump supporting commenter on my reference to the Trump 'golden shower' comment on a previous post which surprises me because it is very much still a topic of conversation with Americans i speak to but if you are ignorant in the use of Capital letters then i can't put too much faith in that person being a reliable source of what the American left are discussing.
The allegation from the Chris Steele Dossier was that when he stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow in 2013 for a Miss Universe contest, Trump hired the presidential suite and employed a a number of prostitutes to perform a urination show for him and the incident was reportedly filmed and recorded by the FSB as kompromat.
Trumps defence was that it never happened because he never stayed overnight in Moscow at the time of the Miss Universe contest in 2013 but flight records showed that Trump flew into Moscow on a private jet and stayed overnight in Moscow the night before the pageant, then during the night of the pageant, he left Moscow at 3:58am so his case falls apart at the first hurdle so what else do we know?
A 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report assessed the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow as a 'high counterintelligence risk environment' with Russian intelligence on it's staff with government surveillance of guests' rooms and prostitutes were a common presence.
Evidence from the surveillance cameras in the lifts had 'gone missing' and in text messages between Trump fixer Michael Cohen and Giorgi Rtskhiladze who had been a contact on the Trump trip, shown to the The Senate Intelligence Committee, after texting that Cohen would have been willing to pay to suppress the information, Rtskhiladze reported that he had 'successfully stopped the flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there's anything else'.
Rtskhiladze told investigators that these were compromising tapes of Trump and Rtskhiladze's description of the tapes' content tracks with the information included in the Steele dossier.
James Comey, in his book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership said that Trump was anxious for him to rule out the existence of the tapes 'to convince his wife that it wasn't true' although Comey said that he believed that the incident may have happened.
For his part Steele said: 'As for the likelihood of the claim that prostitutes had urinated in Trump's presence, its 50–50' but he did receive the information from seven separate source including the former head of Russia's foreign intelligence services who said that they had sexual kompromat on Trump going back years and had him: 'Over a barrel'.
Obviously without evidence of the tape itself it is all supposition and not all of the material in the dossier has been proven but then none has been disproven either but it is a smoking gun, or in this case, a very damp mattress.
Now, about your crippling grammar deficiency...

Tories Out

The Conservative's may have been hoping that the budget may have moved the dial but they will be disappointed by today's mega-poll which is showing that the Government are still heading for a crashing general election defeat.
The You-Gov poll which surveyed 14,000 people predicts that the Conservatives would retain only 169 seats, down from 365 in 2019 while Labour would take 385, up 186 with the Liberal Democrats 48 and the SNP 25.
Rob Ford, a professor of politics at Manchester University, noted that the YouGov modelling appeared to play down the effect of tactical voting in many seats and suggests that things could be even worse for the Conservatives' although losing any majority of 80 seats in one cycle is almost unthinkable but goes to show just how awful the Conservatives have been.
Many Conservatives seem to know that the game is up and are stepping down at the election, including former Premier Theresa May who announced today that she, along with 68 other Tory MP's, will not stand at the next election.
As for the expected incoming Labour Government whose spending plans Jeremy Hunt callously hacked at in his budget, it is going to be tough to implement their ideas when the money they have their eye on has been splashed away in tax cuts and higher borrowing but as one former Politician once said, all political lives end in failure and so it is for the Conservatives, just a shame that they had to drag us all down the gurgler with them. 

Religious Nuts Changing The Definition Of Abortion

 Despite being a hugely personal thing, there seems to be no end of people willing to impart their wisdom on abortion to other people and usually it is the religious folk who feel they have to force their views onto other's and in America the abortion laws took a large step backwards recently but the rosary clutching squad are not resting on their laurels, they have a new target and that is contraception.
One self proclaimed anti-abortion activist, a man obviously, said that they have been laying the groundwork to curtail contraception access for many decades, believing that sex is sacred and should only occur within a heterosexual marriage and in the service of having children.
The activist Pro-Life Action League said that they consider contraception and people using each other for pleasure is disgusting while the Operation Rescue Group called anything that prevents us from having children is anti-child and they do seem to have followers in the Republican Party with some Republican lawmakers recently declared that the 1965 Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to birth control, was wrongly decided and should be reconsidered.  
Some anti-abortionists have even gone as far as to say that fetuses, embryos, and fertilized eggs should have with full rights and legal protections and thus taking a daily birth control pill is a form of killing unborn children, an act of 'abortifacients' or agents that induce abortion which in their minds it must
make sense that birth control can somehow abort a pregnancy before a pregnancy even begins but these are people who won't be troubling any MENSA events anytime soon.
Colorado Senator, Lauren Boebert, tried to block funds for abortifacient contraceptive drugs, while Montana Senator Matt Rosendale tried adding emergency contraception to a bill barring use of the federal funding for abortion and Missouri Republicans have been pushing to restrict public funding for coils and emergency contraception as 'anything that destroys that life is abortion' and in Iowa, Republicans attempted to require pharmacists to give out leaflets with any over the counter contraception that are a form of abortion that 'kills babies'.
All obviously madness but it will be interesting if Donald Trump does win the next election because the anti-abortionists will have a not too bright leader who could easily be swayed to their side of their nonsensical argument and take America even further towards a nation where the religious inmates have taken over the asylum.

All Change In Horoscopes

Astrology is based on the position of the sun, moon, planets and stars relative to certain constellations and despite it being one of the more whacky ideas out there, a poll showed that 27% of Americans, 23% of the French and 46% of Mexicans believe in it.
It has certainly been around for a long, originating in Babylon around the year 700 BC when the 12 zodiac signs were established and each day tens of millions scan the pages of their morning newspaper searching for their own zodiac sign but it has been recently revealed that 86% of us were actually
born under a different constellation to our star sign.  
NASA have confirmed that the sky today is completely different to how it was all that time ago when the Babylonians first invented the 12 signs of the zodiac and actually there are 13 constellations, the Babylonians just deliberately left Ophiuchus out as they used the 12 month calendar and it just made things neat and tidy.
Because they are such boffins, they have produced a new Horoscope which includes the missing Ophiuchus sign so i am now a empathetic, mystical, pleasure-seeking, romantic, imaginative and impressionable Pisces rather than the bold, energetic, charismatic, fun, lively, passionate Aries i have been since i was born.

The new Horoscope is:

    Capricorn: Jan 20 - Feb 16
    Aquarius: Feb 16 – March 11
    Pisces: March 11 – April 18
    Aries: April 18 – May 13
    Taurus: May 13 – June 21
    Gemini: June 21 – July 20
    Cancer: July 20 – Aug 10
    Leo: Aug 10 – Sept 16
    Virgo: Sept 16 – Oct 30
    Libra: Oct 30 – Nov 23
    Scorpio: Nov 23 – Nov 29
    Ophiuchus: Nov 29 – Dec 17
    Sagittarius: Dec 17 – Jan 20

New Gaza Port The Least Biden Can Do

American President Biden has announced plans for the US military establish a port on the Gaza coast to unload aid which puts America in the bizarre position of both funding the Israeli genocide and providing the aid for the victims.
The announcement comes hot on the heels of the massacre of over 100 Palestinians, shot by Israeli forces as they congregated around a convoy of aid trucks in Gaza City last week although Israel deny shooting them although the vast majority of victims who turned up at Gaza Health facilities had bullet wounds.
The decision to help the Palestinians seems to be a political gesture as polls in America seem to show that Biden is massively losing votes over his backing of the Israel's disproportionate response to the October Hamas attacks and this is him looking to be doing something as the condemnation of Israel grows.
The ActionAid Charity said:'It’s going to take weeks to set up and we are talking about a population that is starving now. We have already seen children dying of hunger' so it is worth noting that the 'new' port is required because Israel refuse to open the crossings in Northern Gaza because they are using them to
 move its military in and out of Gaza and are refusing to allow nations to deliver aid to their own ports just to the North of Gaza which could then be driven down to the starving millions.
I don't know if Biden is expecting applause for what he is doing but that would be like thanking an arsonist for lending you a tent after they have burnt your house down with your family inside it which is almost literally what they are doing after refusing to back a ceasefire at the UN and providing Israel with the funds and the means to butcher an entire population.

Is Trump The New Neville Chamberlain?

 I have no idea who Jim Himes is and nor could find his home of Connecticut on a map but he has a good theory on why Donald Trump is so keen to obstruct aid to Ukraine, because it was his dealings with the East European nation invaded by Russia which got him impeached the first time.
Trump attempted to blackmail Ukraine by withholding military supplies needed to fend off Russia while demanding dirt on rivals including Joe Biden and it is this situation repeated now that makes him feel bad because it brings back the bad memories of his first impeachment which makes sense.
He then went on to describe Trump as 'a single celled organism' which could lead to complaints from single celled organisms but it was his final words about how in his dealings with Putin, Trump is a worse appeaser than the 1930s British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.
Now i do have some sympathy with Neville Chamberlain who went to meet the NAZI's, handed them a chunk of Europe and came back waving a piece of paper declaring Peace in our time.
Unfortunately History would prove Hitler wasn't exactly the most trustworthy guy but in 1938 it was only two decades on from the last devastating war and anything must have been better than the thought of millions dying in another one as was shown by his popularity shooting up to 68% straight afterwards.
Something during that meeting in Munich must have triggered Chamberlain though because the extra time he bought was spent ramping up the British military but i sincerely believe that Chamberlain was trying his damnedest to save the World from another tragic, awful war by trying to placate the German's, Trump on the other hand is placating the Russian's because Putin has a certain videotape of a certain ex-President in a certain Moscow Hotel with several ladies who must have drank a lot of water before their visit.

The Last Chance Saloon Budget

 'This is a budget for long-term growth' is how the Chancellor began yesterdays budget but then he said exactly that at the previous budget and we are in recession now it wasn't the best of starts to what many believe will be the final one from the Conservative Government before the General Election.
As all political parties do in the election year budgets, there was the usual bribes and this time it came in the shape of 2p off National Insurance and the promise of scrapping it altogether at some point in the future which would be very well received if we didn't know that with each National Insurance cut comes the proviso that it will mean more years having to work before the state pension kicks in, it has already been quietly raised from 65 to 67 with 68 and even 71 being mooted.
Jeremy Hunt then went on to explain that this budget that was going to cut the overall tax burden, he was obviously unaware that even with his cut to NI, the tax burden over the last 14 years of Conservative Government was at its highest since 1948 but by then he had moved on to how he was scrapping
the Non-Dom's tax who would be expected to pay their tax here to pay for his 2p NI cut, money which the Labour Party had earmarked for the NHS but  it's not as if that public service is on its knees or anything after being horribly underfunded all this time.  
By now the Blue side of the house had almost given up bothering to cheer their man, they knew that the jig was up and Hunt was their last chance to try and pull off something job saving in the last chance saloon but all they got was some warm beer with a fag butt floating in it.   
Fuel duty was frozen despite having said in his Autumn statement that not freezing it was the only way he could meet his own fiscal rules but then this was the Government knowing they were almost certainly going to be moving into the Opposition side of the house when the election does come are are merrily salting the Earth for an incoming Labour government, and then having the cheek to charge us for the salt.

Princess Kate Middleton Missing. Sort Of.

The Princess Kate Middleton hasn’t been seen in public since greeting the crowd after attending the Christmas Morning Service at Sandringham Church on December 25, 2023, and questions are being asked why the next Queen of England is missing.
Not that she is actually missing, we know where she is because Buckingham Palace made an announcement on the 17th January that she is recovering at home from planned abdominal surgery and it was unlikely she would to resume her public duties until Easter.
The lack of information about her health has created a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories which went up a notch when her husband, Prince William, canceled a planned appearance of his own at the last moment on February 27, citing a 'personal matter'.
Immediately the conspiracy theories began and ranged from being in an induced coma, she had died and would be replaced by a body double and she was recovering from plastic surgery but all the Palace said was that Katie continues to do well in her recovery.
Officially, Kate was in the hospital for planned abdominal surgery but the question being asked was if Kate’s surgery was 'planned' in advance, why did she have to postpone her upcoming engagements if they knew she would be out of action for so long and why there no pictures of Kate leaving hospital when the press and their zoom lens are usually laying in wait wherever she goes?
As the news that King Charles was receiving treatment for an enlarged prostate broke on the same day, some people speculated that the palace was trying to cover something up, especially as Kate was in hospital for 2 weeks after her surgery which means the abdominal operation was not 'minor'.
The last press release just said that: 'The timelines of the Princess's recovery stand and we’d only be providing significant updates' but if the reporting of the Princess's condition is subject to a DSMA Notice where media outlets are ordered not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects such as the one which was issued in some aspects of the Salisbury Skripal affair, then nobody is being told anything anytime soon.
Alternatively it could just be that the media outlets for once are just respecting a young woman's request that her personal medical information remains private.

Spring In The UK

As the Earth travels around the Sun Summer is poked in the back by Autumn which is then booted in the backside by Winter which in turn is nudged out of the way by Spring and that is where we find ourselves now although it isn't particularly Spring-like outside.
The confusion is that Spring either starts at midnight on March 1st or 22:06 on March 19th depending on whether you go by the Meteorological or Astronomical calendar.
For Meteorologists the seasons always fall on the same dates with Winter beginning on Dec. 1, Spring begins on March 1, Summer begins on June 1 and Autumn begins on Sept. 1 and that's the way we were taught it at school and that's how it has always been for me but for others the Astronomical Spring begins when the sun crosses the celestial equator hence which it will do in 2024 on the evening of March 19th.
I asked a meteorologist why they stick with their format and he answered that it ensures consistency in record-keeping of things like temperatures and weather conditions.   
So which one is the right one? According to The Met Office, spring officially begins in the UK on the 1st of March and all the Weather people announce it as such so as we are now 'officially' in Spring, what can we expect?
Along with sudden rain showers, blossoming trees and flowering plants, temperatures will rise in the day (between 12°C and 18°C) but stay cool at night (between 6°C and 12°C) and increased daylight 12 to 16 hours per day between March and May, helped by the clocks going forward on the 31st March so no more of that awful going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark so you miss all the days sunlight.
In Spring we get four bank holidays and one (29 March & 1 April) is a long 4 days weekend and the Weather Singularities (probabilities of certain weather types happening at the same dates each year) shows that from 23-31 March there is a 67% it will be Stormy, 10-19 April will be shower (71%) and 17-31 May there is a 88% chance that it will be dry and warm and the cold, dark and rainy Winter will be a long forgotten memory.

Transhumanism And Pineapple Hedgehogs

Listening to a scientist talking about uploading our brains to Computers, i thought that i had better run this post by an IT expert to iron out any errors but to be honest, it kinda got away from me after the very first sentence which was: 'Imagine if you can, brain scanning technology and observing how
each individual neuron talks to other neurons'.
Nope, can't even begin to imagine it but we were getting free sandwiches at the end so i thought i had better hang around and make some sort of effort to understand it so mentally shook myself down, opened my mind and poised my notebook on my lap ready to understand how great it would be if  we can record all the neuron information to create a simulation of someone’s brain on a computer to transition a person from their biological body to synthetic hardware.
I guess it would be great...i suppose. Bugger i missed that but he used the word 'Transhumanism' which sounds something star trekky so i had better write that down, the geeks would lap that up.
Apparently if we could upload our minds to computers we could theoretically live forever and our brains would work better, faster and more efficiently than our biological ones but my biological brain has worked out that those people are bringing out plates wrapped in silver foil and laying them on the tables.
Oooh, that one is holding one of those hedgehogs with cheese and pineapple chunks, i do like a cheese and pineapple hedgehog...damn, i missed the first two of the three assumptions but it was something like the idea that if the person created in the process is really 'you'.
Now some bloke in a white lab coat is explaining how the human brain has around 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells, with an estimated one million billion neural connections and at the moment the most complex living thing they have managed to draw a diagram of is a fruit fly larva, which has about 3,000 neurons and 500,000 neural connections and took 3 years.
Some way to go then...i know a few people who probably have the brain power of a fruit fly larvae so they should move onto them, ah now he has quoted Rene 'i think therefore i am' Descartes so the idea is philosophical rather than actual, oh he poo-pooed it and said that it's the conscious mind they are interested in rather than the biological matter which is mostly fat and water anyway. Some more than others buster.
The computer, so he said, would replicate your brain’s structure and thereby replicate your conscious mind and then its a massive leap to 'let's assume we could do that' but we all know what 'assume' does, it makes you look a complete ass and delays the moment you get to the pineapple and cheese chunks so let's hurry this up and assume you've finished.
Damn, he has just put more slides on the screen and this one says is the morning 'you' the same person who went to bed the night before? What sort of a question is that? Would be a bloody confusing family breakfast table if someone who looked like Brain Blessed sat down with my cornflakes in the morning.
Good new is he said he would explain why this is important, bad news is he is explaining it with algebra so if the original biological you also survives the uploading process, along with your consciousness, there would be two people, resulting in two of 'you, a biological form (B) and one in an uploaded form (C) so we have (A) literally split into two separate people (B ≠ C) and be identical with both at the same time but you can only have either A = B or A = C.
Jesus H Christ on a pogo-stick, what is this guy crapping on about, you would have two people but you can't because A = B, and the upload would merely be a mental copy and not 'you' which makes it unlikely that 'you' would exist.
So in short, you science guys have only got as far as drawing the brains of a fruit fly larvae, you assume that we can do it and if we did then it wouldn't be 'you' anyway so why have i spent an hour sat here listening to this so i'm going to nick off to the buffet table while you do the Q&A bit.
My question would be is there any cheese sandwiches and is there a limit on the amount of cheese and pineapple chunks because i've missed lunch for this.