Now A Convicted Criminal To Add To Trump List Of Shame

Donald Trump is guilty of many things, being an oompa-lumpah shade of orange to name just one of many but whether he was guilty of falsifying business records to hide his affair with a porn star we found out last night and he is, guilty 34 times actually.
Trump didn't expect to get off scott free though, saying even Mother Teresa wouldn’t be able to get free of the charges of having sex with and then paying off a porn star and if she had broken the law in the same way that he did then i doubt if she would, that's the whole point on having a jury although now that he is a criminal and has a shiny criminal record to prove it, he is potentially barred from voting and owning a gun but not, apparently, barred from running for President again.
It may be worth remembering here that last time he was in the White House he mishandled classified documents, attempted to overturn the election result and fomented the 6 January attack on the US Capitol as well as been found liable for sex abuse, defamation and impeached twice but according to some, falsifying his business records and now having the words 'Sex Abusing Criminal' beside his name is not the drawback it would appear in America, a country where a former president being convicted of multiple crimes is a boost to his prospects of getting the job again.
Before the verdict was read out his awful son, Donald Jr, said that he was proud to stand by his father in court which is a bit of a weird one when his father was in court for paying the silence of a porn star but it was the moron's words afterwards which made me smile, saying that 'America was turning into a third-world shithole' to which the reaction of many would have been: 'You're not wrong there pal' as we all sit on the sidelines and laugh.
So convicted criminal and sex abuser former President Donald Trump is now able to go about his business of being re-elected President and i am sure there are enough hapless gullible morons that will vote for him even if he is sat in a jail cell, which in some ways is incredibly funny but in others, quite scary if there are enough of them to vote him back into office.

Lib Dems Dicking About & Greens Pushing Things

The role of the other parties in this General Election who are not Labour nor Conservative is to make sure voters not forget they are there and the Lib Dems have come up with the wheeze of doing something so blatantly mad cap each day so we had Ed Davey falling repeatedly off a paddleboard and Ed Davey gurning as he rides a bike down a hill, legs akimbo so while the Lib Dems have gone for dicking around in lakes, on bikes, up trees or anywhere a camera waits to stay relevant, the Greens have gone much more grown up.
The problem the Greens have is that they really are a one trick pony, they all all over the important Environmental issues and many people are on board with that, who but the most dunderheaded wouldn't want to live in a cleaner world where you don't risk contracting any number of noroviruses while you paddle in the sea but after that, the Greens have very little and you need to have more than one policy to be in Government.
So the Greens kept their launch today very short and sweet, 15 mins from start to finish and featured knitted rosettes, pictures of sewage being spilt into our lakes and rivers and large plastic 'Vote Green' placards being held up.
Before any journalist could ask if they were single use plastic signs the leaders were giving us some meat on the bones of their policies and that was as meaty as a pencil because they will 'push the next government for bold action' and 'push Labour to be bolder and braver' and generally push other things with their main aim being to get 4 Green MP's in the Commons which is a worthy goal but as the only Green Party member anyone knows, Caroline Lucas, is stepping down then just getting 1 Green MP could be the definition of pushing it.

Biden's Rapidly Disappearing Red Line

The problem with drawing a red line is when the red line is danced all over you either have to do something or look a complete fool and back down and Joe Biden has decided to look a fool and frantically rub out the line then actually do something to stop the Israeli genocide going on courtesy of the weapons he has provided.
Just over two weeks ago, President Biden told the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to go into Rafah and if he did: I'm not supplying the weapons' but Bibi not only went into Rafah, his military has been slaughtering Palestinians whether they were retreating for yet another apparent safe place or living in tents and used the American weapons to do it.
So all eyes on Rafah and Biden and we waited to see the response, would Biden withdraw the weapons? Stop funding the genocide? Join in the rtest of the world calling for an immediate ceasefire? What he did was change the definition of exactly what 'going into Rafah' meant.
Biden's security advisor told us about the increasingly elastic red line meant that there 'was no mathematical formula for working out when it had been crossed' and they would be judging it on whether there is a lot of death and destruction or if it is more precise and proportional.
Biden must have been happy with that as long as Israeli didn't do the usual Israeli thing and kill large numbers in the offensive it would be fine, unfortunately, the Israeli's did just that and days later 50 Palestinians are killed in an attack on a displaced people's camp in Rafah which Israel said 'oops, unfortunate accident' and added yet another investigation to the list.
At this point Biden must have sat in the Oval Office and wondered run the words 'Precise and proportional' and 'a lot of death and destruction' through his mind and came up with the idea that this STILL didn't cross his red line so that makes it ok to carry on providing the military aid.
As the call for Israel to be sanctioned for Genocide at the ICC and ICJ grow even louder and more and more nations are sidestepping America and Israel and recognising Palestine, Biden is looking more and more out of step and must be concerned that the 1948 Genocide Convention, outlines that complicity in genocide is a punishable act, and as he is continuing to give military and financial support to the very nation slaughtering large numbers of civilians using the weapons he provided them with to do, he is complicit up to his eyeballs and hopefully he wont get his second term but then the problem is that the other guy is even more of an arse in making America Israel's bitch.

UK Election For Newbies

There are just over 5 million 18 to 23 year olds in the UK which means 5 million people who were not able to vote at the last General Election in 2019 so all this stuff going on may be a bit tricky to understand so here's a little guide to understanding the UK General Election.
What is a general election for? It is not to pick a Prime Minister as you may think, that is just a consequence of whoever gets the most votes so you can't vote for who you want to be Prime Minister, you can vote for your local MP who will represent your areas or constituency which is one of 650.
Whichever Party wins the most constituencies, get to make up the Government and whoever is leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister.
Our system is called the First Past The Post System which means whichever party gets to 326 seats and therefore cannot be beaten and can form the next government.
To be able to vote you must be over 18, must be registered to vote in your constituency, must be either a British citizen, a qualifying Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of the Irish Republic and must not be a convicted prisoner or in a mental hospital.
To actually vote you take your poll card and photo ID to a polling station on 4th July between 7am and 10pm and you will be handed a ballot paper with the list of candidates and their parties and you put a cross next to the MP you want to vote for and slip it into the ballot box.
Voting closes at 10pm and there will be an exit poll which is basically a survey of people being asked who they voted for and they are generally a very good indicator of what to expect because by the time the ballot boxes are collected and the votes counted it is generally after midnight and goes on through the night with the the final results coming in by late morning.
A hung parliament happens when no party has the 326 seats needed for the majority so parties come to an arrangement to get together to make the 326 between them and then the parties rule together as a coalition government as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats did in 2010.
If the ruling party win then they carry on but if they lose then the prime minister resigns and the King will invite the leader of the party that has won the election to form a government and move their furniture in 10 Downing Street.
Five years later we get to do it all over again.

DJ's Give Thanks To In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Radio Presenters of stations which still play music will be smoking more and giving their bladders a rest tonight because on the death of the Iron BUtterfly lead vocalist, Doug Ingle, they will legitimately be able to play the rock classic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida today.
Usually, the 17 minute hit from 1968 is played when the presenter needs a smoke or a toilet break during their stint but originally they would have had time to pop home and feed the cat because it was cut down from an initial 35 minutes.
A great story is that the song was meant to be called 'In The Garden Of Eden' but when asked the title, Ingle was so drunk that what he slurred was written down as 'In A Gadda Da Vida' and once he sobered up he just went 'Oh Well' and just went with it.   
Taking up the entire B side of the album of the same name, it spent 81 weeks in the top 10 in the US and sold over 400,000 copies and despite being around 14 minutes too long and featuring a 13 minute instrumental break with a 2 minute drum solo in the middle, it's not a bad song with a decent organ led hook even if it is very much a 60's prog-rock type song which i imagine many a spliff was smoked to by people in very wide bottomed jeans and psychedelic shirts back in the day.
Radio presenters everywhere will be lingering just that bit longer in the toilet and rising their second cigarette today in appreciation of Doug Ingle and Iron Butterfly.

It's A Miracle...Or Is It?

A Eucharistic miracles consist of unexplainable phenomena such as an apparition of Jesus or the Virgin Mary, unexplained voices, writings or messages from the beyond, the weeping or bleeding of sacred images and generally things in those sort of areas but the views of the Catholic Church may be mired in ther 15th Century (gay marriages, women in general etc) but in some ways it has moved into the 21st Century because the amount of 'miracles' appearing on Social Media has forced it to reevaluate exactly what a miracle is.
Where the decision of whether a miracle was real or fake was originally down to the discretion of the local bishop but now that miracles are under new management, the decision is now in the hands of a central team who get to decide if it is God's work or a bored teenage with Photoshop.
There are now six classifications a miracle can fall into ranging from definetly super-natural through concerns about the credibility of the phenomenon to increasing doubts to finally a massive fake, kind of yep definetly, likely, benefit of the doubt, doubtful, unlikely and finally to how dumb do these people think we are?  
The Church does acknowledge that the outcome of the new norms will minimise the number of phenomena recognised as 'Miracles' but they hope, this will make the real miracles even more impressive
so that face of Jesus on your toast or the Virgin Mary on that door of the local Wetherspoons may indeed be a miracle but the biggest miracle is how, in 2024, people still believe in this religion rubbish.

What Made It Through Friday?

Rishi announced the General Election on the Wednesday and Parliament was prorogued on the Friday which meant that the Members of Parliament only had two days to vote in any new laws so they abandoned the 'harder' ones that would have struggled to have have made it through and voted in the 'easy' ones everyone agreed on and could be fast-tracked through Parliament so what was ditched and what made it onto the law books?
Out went the Tobacco and Vapes Bill which would have banned anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes and the Renters Reform Bill which would have banned no-fault evictions. The Football Governance Bill which would have set up an external regulator to look into Football teams going into financial bankruptcy was booted into Row Z joined by the Criminal Justice Bill which would have given police powers to move rough sleepers, creating an offence of causing death by dangerous cycling and banning sex offenders from changing their names.
Laws to ensure annual licences for oil and gas projects in the North Sea, a replacement for the EU data protection regime, banning public bodies from boycotting Israel and a new law for whole-life sentences for the worst murders also fell by the wayside so what did they vote through?
The Post Office Offences Bill quashing the convictions of sub-postmasters convicted in the Horizon scandal was waved through as was compensation for victims of the infected blood scandal as was the Bill which makes online stores from adding additional fees to an item once the customer reaches the checkout and foreign governments are now banned from owning UK newspapers.
Also through are higher jail sentences for people stealing cats and dogs, the British Nationality Bill which makes it easier for Irish nationals to register for British citizenship and a tweak to an existing law making it easier for pubs to stay open later if England or Scotland reach the semi-finals or finals of the Euros.
The Rwanda plan is already law so couldn't be dropped even if Rishi has admitted that no flights crammed full of illegal immigrants will be taking off for Africa before the election and as Labour have said they will scrap it straight away of they get in, you do have to wonder if we get the £240m we handed over to the Rwandan President Paul Kamage who must be thinking wow, and they say we are a backward nation.

The Questions The Politicians Won't Want To Be Asked About

The starting gun has been fired and the election machines crank into life so you won't be able to turn on the TV over the next six weeks without some politicians gurning back at you but what will they be saying, or more importantly, not saying?  
The Conservatives message is to stick with whatever plan they have been applying over the last 14 years and not to risk ruining it by voting Labour. What they won't want to be asked about is anything from the previous 13 years such as Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, NHS, Brexit or basically anything pre-October 2022, when Sunak became PM
The Labour message is it is time for a change and to repair the economic black hole which is the British economy. What they won't want to be asked about is Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, Gaza and Angela Rayner's Capital Gains Tax arrangements.
The Liberal Democrats push is that they are the party for anyone who doesn't like the Conservatives but are not keen on Labour and this has worked in by-elections. There main message is to hammer the Sewage problem under the Conservatives but they won't want to be reminded of their immediate reversal of Brexit pledge, their previous teaming up with the Conservatives or leaders Ed Davey's role in the Post Office scandal when he was the Business Minister.
The Scottish National Party will go big on how they are the only party who can speak for Scotland in Westminster but won;t want questions how that forensic tent outside Nicola Sturgeon’s house, Humza Yousaf, police arrests of previous leaders, luxury motorhomes or the NHS waiting lists up there.
The Greens big message is Labour is going to win so why not have a few Greens in Parliament also so they can push them on the environment and net zero but what they won't want questions on is
Transgender issues which seems particularly divisive for the Greens after they suspended senior members for 'gender-critical views' .
The Reform UK Party's message is that they are more right wing than the Conservatives and speak up for those disenchanted with Rishi Sunak and they will hammer legal and illegal immigration and woke culture but don't ask how they will split the right wing vote and allow an even more thumping Labour win.
There we go then so when a Tory, Labour or any of the other assorted politicians turn up in your town banging on about what they will do, you know what to ask to make them squirm uncomfortably.

You Are Welcome American Gun Nuts

I have often stuck my nose into American bizarre gun laws and always thought that as the screwy gun nuts won't allow a ban on guns and offering thoughts and prayers after another loony shoots a bunch of school children, why not just make it exorbitantly expensive to buy a gun and the bullets in the first place which would shift them out of the hands of anyone but the most dedicated of people fond of propelling a bullet into someone.     
Appears that someone in California read my blog and decided that English woman may be on to something and from July, California will be whacking an extra 11% tax on guns and ammunition to reduce gun sales which immediately got the National Rifle Association squeaking in protest which means they know this would have an impact on gun sales.
It is a well worn path they are treading which is that by making a given product more expensive, cigarettes and alcohol for example, such a tax leads people to buy less of it, reducing the harm to society and with the annual gun death rate hitting 40,000 in America and 120,000 injured, that is a lot of harm to society being done right there.
Economists are estimating that the Californian gun tax should be highly effective and consider that for every 1% increase in price, demand decreases by 2.6% and the the California tax would reduce gun sales by between 30% to 44%.
If applied across the country, a drop of a third of guns sold would do wonders to reduce the amount of people attending funerals or praying next to hospital beds of loved ones but the obvious problem is anyone wanting a cheaper gun or bullets would just pop over the border to buy it but other states struggling against gun related deaths would be watching closely how things work out in California and replicate it themselves and reducing the opportunity for the sort of deranged people who like to quote their rights under the second amendment after each shooting.
Relax gun nuts, you can still compensate for whatever inadequacies you feel owning a gun makes up for, you will just have to pay through the nose for it. You are very welcome.

An Expensive Stones Throw From The Seaside

I live literally a stones throw from the beach and as the beach is one of the pebbly types, there are a lot of stones available to throw but i wasn't aware that the 1949 Coastal Protection Act makes it 'unlawful to excavate or remove any materials on, under or forming part of any portion of the seashore' and that includes sand, pebbles or fossils so if like most people you have a souvenier pebble on the sideboard or that rockery in your garden came courtesy of a bag of stones from the beach then march yourself down to the local police station because you are a dirty criminal.
Cumberland Council in the north of England has been looking through the law books and have announced that anyone caught taking pebbles from beaches will now face fines of up to £1,000 but they do have science behind them because the pebbles and sand on the beach is there to provide natural protection for homes and infrastructure from the sea.
The science is that the more pebbles and sediment on the beach, the more able the beach is to absorb wave energy and removing pebbles and sand makes the beach less able to act as a natural barrier to flooding and erosion.
I agree that one person taking a few pebbles from the beach as a momento of that Summer holiday may not significantly affect the the overall beach volume, the cumulative effect of many people removing numerous pebbles may be more significant especially as the sea level creeps up thanks to Global Warming so now we know it is illegal, and the local Council can raise money from it, i expect to see it being enforced and look out my window and see kids crying because Mummy and Daddy have been hauled away to a local court to be fined for stepping off the beach with that pretty coloured stone they found.

The Next 6 Weeks Yawn-Fest

Readers who are not in the UK will quickly get fed up with my UK General Election posts and in my 'real' job i have to be fair, balanced and impartial to all sides and somehow ignore that polling maestro John Curtice places Labour on a 99% chance of victory and Rishi Sunak's Conservatives have as much chance of winning as finding a diet sheet taped to Donald Trump's fridge door but this is my blog and i can say whatever the bloody hell i want about any of the parties and believe me, the next 6 weeks are going to deliver some comedy gold.
Already we have had Rishi in the rain, Rishi being questioned by 'workers' at a distribution plant who turned out to all be Conservative Councillors, Rishi asking a group of Welsh if they are looking forward to the Euro's when they never qualified but even worse is the Rishi request that he wants to have no fewer than six TV debates with the Labour leader – one every week. SIX!!!
Drab Rishi Sunak versus beige Keir Starmer would be arguably the least watchable thing on TV and when we have Snooker and Golf on it at the moment that's really saying something but i intend to leave the serious stuff (mostly) for the other blogs and concentrate on the comedy we have heading our way until July 4th and as the hapless Liz Truss and walking gaffe Boris Johnson are sure to be unable to not stick their noses in while Keir Starmer tries to sit on his own loose cannons, it's not going to be short of cringey and laugh out loud but not in a good way moments.  
The next 6 weeks will drag and be tedious and the Conservatives will tell us how great they have been and Labour will tell us how great they are going to be and the Lib Dems will be popping up to remind us that they are still actually there but if we can take the piss out of the lot of them it will make it a lot easier to get to July 5th and Nigel Farage's 'Talking Pints' can regain its proper place as the most tedious thing on the TV.

Right Wing Party Attracts Nutty Right Wing Candidates Shocker

When you are a far right wing party then obviously your candidates will be of a similar ilk and the Reform UK Party, a continuation of the now defunct Brexit Party, are struggling to find the required number of people to fulfill their promise to field a representative at every constituency.
The problem doesn't attracting candidates, the problem is attracting candidates who are not your typical Reform supporters which is why they have had to remove 110 of them for offensive, racist comments ad endorsing conspiracy theorists and is now facing a race against time to select for as many as 160 constituencies before the cut-off point for nominations.
I want Reform to stand in every place they can because they will reduce the Conservative share of votes because until Reform UK came along, the natural home of the racist headbangers was the Conservative Party who happily shuffled further to the right to accommodate them but are now within touching distance of the nutty Reformers that many have just stepped over and left the Conservatives twisting in the extreme right wing wind.  
A Reform UK spokesperson said: 'Because of what has happened in recent months we have been more strict with vetting' which means they were not very careful to start with so if you struggle to read even the most basic literature, have no concern for your fellow man, don't like to share and are intellectually backwards, refuse to recycle, question climate change and believe in the fairness of our Capitalist system then drop the Reform UK leader Richard Tice an email because he may have an opening for you.

US Sidestepped By Nations Recognising Palestine

The US has long been bias towards Israel and after the American veto of recognising the state of Palestine two weeks ago countries have got together to bypass the United Nations and America's veto and recognise Palestine themselves.  
Spain, Norway and Ireland’s now join Sweden, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania with the UK, Australia, Malta and Slovenia considering recognising Palestine amid a deeper frustration over the long refusal of Israel to advance towards a two-state solution as it swallows up Palestinian land for its own settlements.
Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said recognition was needed to support the only alternative that offers a political solution but Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, accused Israel’s prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of carrying out a “massacre” in Gaza and and the Irish prime minister, Simon Harris, said he expected other countries to join them recognising a Palestinian state in the
coming weeks.
The foreign minister, Israel Katz, ordered the immediate return of the Israeli ambassadors to the three countries for consultations and warned that further “severe consequences” could follow.
The recognition comes hard on the heels of Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, being told that warrants are being sought against them for war crimes by  the international criminal court as well as Israel being investigated for genocide against the Palestinians.
Israel is fast becoming a pariah and becoming ever more diplomatically isolated, a situation which regrettably it took decades and a genocide to arrive at.

Drowning Street

Surely everyone knows that if you get a drip wet, you just get an even bigger drip which is why Rishi Sunak walked to the lectern to announce the General Election 5' 1" and walked back 15 minutes later 6' 2", surely the Conservatives haven't ruined the economy enough to not to be able to afford an umbrella.
I assume it was decided that to have him standing there with him holding an umbrella would somehow make him look weak so he strode out and to hell with the elements, he was going to show the British people just how tough he was which brought to mind the ninth US President, William Henry Harrison.
By the time Old Billy H got to the top job in the White House he was 68 and the general consensus was that he was too old an frail to serve in office so to prove just how fit he was he arrived on horseback rather than a closed carriage and didn't wear an overcoat or a hat and to ram the point home, he delivered the longest inaugural address in American history and 2 hours later he was standing in the cold, damp rain and could feel a bit of a sniffle coming on.
The sniffle turned into a cold which grew progressively worse over the next two days and ended up as pneumonia and even doctors attaching leeches to him didn't improve his condition and he died 31 days later making him the shortest serving American President.
I hope Rishi is feeling peachy today and he hasn't been supping on the Lemsip's since but rather than enhance his image, it just gave the newspapers the chance to mention him being Drown and Out and how things can only get wetter.

July General Election?

Ministers have been called back to England including the Foreign Secretary and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has cancelled hs TV appearances while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has delayed his flight to attend a Nato meeting in Lithuania and Rishi Sunak has announced he will be delivering an announcement outside No 10 at 5pm  which can only mean one of two things, either they are all going to be sacked or Rishi is going to call a General Election.
Rumours of a snap election are flying round newsrooms and the bookies have slashed the odds of a general election taking place between July and September with July 4th the most likely.
The latest a general election could be called is January 2025 but it was previously thought that October and December was the most likely outcome but the Prime Minister has decided to go early and
with some government insiders suggesting that Sunak had been persuaded that with the economic backdrop unlikely to improve he would be better off going now.
Labour is around 20 points ahead in the polls and have been consistently ahead since the start of 2022 and Starmer is widely expected to become the next prime minister and end the 14 years of Conservative rule, we can only hope.

ICC Hunting Israeli And Hamas War Criminals

It may be woefully late but finally the International Criminal Court has got around to issuing arrest warrants for members of the Hamas leaders and the Israeli Government for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip since October 8 2023.
My question would be why only charge the Israeli Government for war crimes since 2023 because they have been literally getting away with murder with the backing of it's useful idiot ally America for decades, occupying, attacking and killing unarmed Palestinians, building a wall that incarcerates a whole population, holding over 9000 Palestinians in its prisons without charge, destroying farms, bulldozing homes and businesses, building apartments on occupied land in defiance of United Nation Resolutions and building a secret nuclear weapon program.
The United Nations has 65 resolutions against Israel including in 2019 when a UN investigation into the killing of 183 protesters in Gaza concluded that Israel committed war crimes and crimes against humanity with soldiers intentionally using live ammunition against children, women, journalists, health workers and people with disabilities resulting in over 6,000 people injured and 183 killed.
The charges against the Hamas leaders include extermination, murder, hostage taking, rape and other acts of sexual violence, torture and cruel treatment while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are alleged to be criminally responsible for a number of international crimes including the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, wilfully causing great suffering, wilful killing, intentional attacks against a civilian population, extermination and murder and  persecution.
The next step is for the three ICC judges to rule on whether the arrest warrants can be issued, expected to be a rubber stamp exercise, which will allow any country to arrest any of the named war criminals to be arrested and handed over to the Hague for trial.
With boring predictability, Netanayhau called it antisemitism and 'a moral outrage of historic proportions' while Hamas issued a statement strongly denouncing decision as it 'equates the victim with the executioner'.
As the Hamas leadership is holed up in Qatar and Israel's chief ally is America and neither are signed up to the ICC, it is unlikely any arrests would be made in those nations but the ICC was at pains to point out that there is no direct comparisons between the two sides, except to lay out his claim that they have both committed a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity which  human rights groups have applauded the way that the ICC is to applying the law to both sides.
The issuing of the warrant would put Netanyahu in the same unattractive war criminal category as Vladmir Putin, Colonel Gaddafi, Klaus Barbie, Eichmann, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Radovan Karadžić , Ratko Mladić, Saddam Hussein, Candido Noriega and the entire Khmer Rouge regime, which is not attractive company and Netanyahu, Gallant and the Hamas leadership will not be able to travel to any country that is a member of the court, for fear of arrest which means 124 countries will be out of bounds, including the UK and most of Europe and would make it almost impossible for nations to do business with a government whose leader is wanted for war crimes.

We Are All Just Human's Trying To Live

There are a few times in my life when i have read something which has stayed with me forever and one of them is the Carl Sagan monologue used to describe the famous picture of Earth taken by Voyager 1 as it turned its camera around as it passed Saturn and photographed our Planet 4 billion miles away which become known as the Pale Blue Dot.  
Sagan's words were perfect and start with: 'That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives' and these words came back to me when my writing partner and I were cranking out the Famous Dead Bloggers series of posts, all these people, the famous, the infamous and kings and queens, murderers, Saints, dictators and doctors have all come and gone and left enough of an imprint for a couple of bloggers to write about them hundreds or thousands of year later.
Globally, average life expectancy is 73.16 years so it is fairly safe to surmise that in 100 years from now, almost everyone on Earth, all 8 billion of us will be different, there will be hardly anyone alive today who will be alive in 2124 as almost the entire population in 1824 was different in 1924 and the same in 1024 to 1124 or 124bc to 24bc, pick any era from the tens of thousands of years that us humans have been on the Earth.
This blog is called Falling On A Bruise which is a Evelyn Waugh quote which means doing something painful again and again in exactly the same way and i thought it summed up perfectly what we have been doing since time immemorial, falling on the exact same bruise again and again with our wars and persecutions of anyone of a different ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, nation, political beliefs or any other reason our nefarious minds have dreamt up to forcibly remove anyone who we deemed 'different'.
It is amazing to think that a whole new group of people have come along and acted and thought in exactly the same way as the previous ones which must say something about either nature or nurture, the Psychological debate over how much a person's characteristics are formed by either biological factors such as genetics or their upbringing or life experiences but that argument has been going on since the Ancient Greeks thousands of years ago so i'm not about to make a declaration on it, if great minds like Plato or Aristotle couldn't work it out then i'm not about to.  
Sadly, if it is Nature and it is a genetic trait to want to kill, subjugate and persecute each other then there is no hope for us and it will continue for as long as humans survive on this ball of rock but if it is nurture and all these horrific things are shaped by our upbringing and experiences, then we have a chance to reverse what we have been doing to each other since we evolved.
I come down on the Nurture side but not because i have any particular insight or evidence for it, to me it means we have a chance to escape the depressingly long chain of events which have blighted mankind and all it takes is for us all to deal more kindly with one another regardless of how hard some people try to tell persuade us some of us are 'different', because we are not and have never been, we are all just human beings trying to get through our allotted 73.16 years as best we can.

People Who Use Long Words

Don't you just hate people go all sesquipedalianism and use big words just to make themselves look perspicacious? I know i do so you won't be seeing any reference to antidisestablishmentarianism here and i won't be trying to find a way to work pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis into the post, that would just be floccinaucinihilipilification.
Not that i am in anyway a suffer of hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia but stuffing a sentence with long words which leads to lots of incomprehensibilities is pointless, it doesn't lead to honorificabilitudinitatibus or anything so i keep away from doing it at all.
Luckily my German is non-existent because  how the hell would the word for the law for the delegation of monitoring beef labeling be included so rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz will be kept firmly out of things and there is nothing super about supercalifragilisticexpialidocious which was a word made up for a movie.
Doctors may need to be able to say pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism or thyroparathyroidectomized but i don't although they may want to take a psychological look at why some people feel the need to
use such long words but as i am not doing that, no need for any psychoneuroendocrinological here thankfully.
This post then is safe for all bibliophobes from Taumatawhakatangi­hangakoauauotamatea­turipukakapikimaunga­horonukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu in New Zealand to
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in Wales.

Into The Last Weekend Of The Season

Last week was a bit of a strange one for Arsenal fans as we all turned into Tottenham fans for their game against Manchester City on Tuesday and Tottenham fans turned into Manchester City fans and hoped their team lost to stop Arsenal from winning the league.
I am not expecting my team, Arsenal, to clinch the Premier League this weekend but there has been much talk on if it is ever ok for you to cheer for your own team to lose but these were Tottenham fans and to be fair to them, stopping someone else from winning something is pretty much as good as it gets for a team who last won the top league when the Beatles were still an unsigned band and Yuri Gagarin was looking down on us all from Space.
Such was the Spurs fans fervour in stopping Arsenal by losing, they even forfeited a chance of qualifying for the Champions League themselves and the millions that brings which would come in very handy for a team who have a huge Harry Kane shaped hole in their forward line.
And so to the final day of the Premier League season and even if Arsenal beat Everton this weekend it is likely Manchester City will beat West Ham and win their fourth Premier League title in a row so it is amazing how much success a team can have when they spend a billion pound building a team and face 115 charges for breaches of Premier League rules.
This weekend then there will be some very strange alliances with Arsenal fans cheering for West Ham, Tottenham fans will be cheering Manchester City, Manchester United fans will be cheering Arsenal
and Chelsea fans will be cheering for Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest fans will be hoping that Luton don't win 13-0 against Fulham and relegate them.
Hopefully, Arsenal will be blowing bubbles and sending a massive Thank You basket to David Moyes and his West Ham players Sunday evening but if not then Que Sera, Sera and all that and well done Manchester City and we will get our hands on the 2024 Premier League title when you get stripped of all your titles for cheating anyway.

Sex Educations Should Be About Everything

The UK government has released new plans for relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in primary and secondary schools in England. This would see age parameters introduced for key issues in sex education, with no education on sex at all for children under the age of nine, then puberty taught at age eight and nine, conception and birth when children are nine and ten and explicit discussion of sexual acts when children are aged 13 and 14.
I have no disagreement with any of that and most kids have the internet and will know all about it by the time the lessons roll around anyway, i remember my sex education was a couple of video's in the classroom when i was about 9 or 10 and then all us kids talking about it in the playground afterwards and asking older brothers and sisters and that was it.    
One thing the Government are saying can't be taught is anything around the concept of gender identity which does trouble me a bit because it is leaving out a big part of sex education, when i was a kid we had Section 28 Laws which were introduced by Margaret Thatcher who said that: 'Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life' which meant that schools were banned from 'promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality' so i never learnt about it.
Looking back at that now it looks outdated and just plain wrong to not teach children about homosexuality, i assume the thinking was if they taught it then some children may turn out gay which is exactly what i assume the thinking is behind keeping quiet about gender issues.
I don't know if the incoming Labour Government will make any changes to it but if it isn't going to be taught it should be at least discussed because the children will be seeing it in their everyday life so it shouldn't be ignored.
The Section 28 of my day just led to homosexuals being classed as 'not normal' and 'weird and strange' but nobody bats an eyelid now except the Churchy types who have that kind of backward looking mentality anyway and try to uphold the 'marriage is only between a man and a woman'  nonsense and by not discussing gender identity then this will also happen to anyone questioning their gender.
If you are going to teach kids about sex and sexual relationships then you need to tell them everything and not just cherry pick the bits you want. 

Genocide? What Genocide Ask Israel

Israel have been in the International Court of Justice today to defend itself against it's ruling that it is committing genocide against the Palestinians and called the ruling 'obscene', explained that it made 'extraordinary efforts to protect civilians' and said what was going on was a 'tragic conflict but no genocide'.
Obviously the country committing the genocide is always going to say they are not but if Israel say they are not then we really should take them at their word.
Of course that would mean dismissing the United Nations definitions of exactly what Genocide is called the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2 and overlook part 1, 'killing members of the group' which would mean we ignore the 35,000 death toll so far with many more bodies buried beneath the rubble of their homes and other buildings.
Part 2, relating to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment can go to one side along with the 2,200 Palestinian men, women and children being held in administrative detention, without charge or trial and all those videos of prisoners being severely beaten and humiliated Palestinians.
No need to look at part 3 where it defines genocide as deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction so subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services so Israel not allowing aid into Gaza and attacking aide convoys when they did arrive, bombing every hospital in Gaza so there is no Health Service in the strip and people dying from starvation and disease as the utilities have been bomb damaged and Gazan's have been ordered to leave their homes en-mass and cross the country, we'd better make sure this part of the Genocide Act it is well out of sight.
Of the five acts of Genocide, we could easily pin 3 on Israel and the ICJ and ICC have but Israel is saying it hasn't done any of the above and who are we to argue, it isn't as if it has been militarily occupying Palestine and murdering them and stealing their land for over 60 years or anything.
Hang on...

Hey Men, Drive Like Women

Some of my posts may be contentious but we are firmly in uncontroversial territory here because this one is about why are men such bad drivers?
In France 84% of fatal road accidents are caused by men and the figures aren’t much better for the UK so why can’t everyone drive like us women?
The French safety awareness organisation, Victims and Citizens, has just unveiled a series of posters that read: “Drive like a woman'.
This isn't just the French being typically French and trying to start an argument because they have statistics to back it up which state that according to the French government, 84% of fatal road accidents and 93% of drink-driving crashes in France are caused by men.
The French are said to be among the most aggressive drivers in Europe with 91% routinely break the speed limit, 65% using their phones while driving, and 32% admitted to deliberately hitting the vehicle of a driver that annoyed them which all lead to 3,000 road deaths a year..
Analysis of British drivers show that men are almost three times as likely as women to be involved in accidents that kill or seriously injure pedestrians and in America male drivers were involved in 72.3% of fatal crashes on US roads so wherever you go, the ones with testicles are causing more serious road accidents than the sex which hasn't.
So how do we all drive like women? The French suggest be more cautious and less aggressive, slow down, be patient, leave a sensible gap between you and the car in front of you which may mean that it will take you longer to get where you are going, but you and the people around you would all get there alive and you won't be scraping bits of pedestrians off your front bumper which seems fair.
I understand that men will be mumbling is there anything they can do like a man and of course there is, you can park for us when we get there because driving like a woman is one thing but parking like one is probably not the best idea. Over to you men, just not too far away, you will then have to carry the shopping in from where you park up.

Put The Camera Phones Down For Now

Whereas usually the only people who see the Northern Lights are the few hardy souls and polar bears of the Arctic Circle, last weekend the Sun spat out a flare so large that even people as down as the
South Coast of England were able to see one of natures most impressive phenomenons.
The usual Solar Flares which are emitted by the Sun and only visible to the lucky few are of the A, B, C and M variety but occasionally the Sun gets it full paddy on and coughs up an extreme X-class flare such as the one last week which was an X2 and had a million camera phones pointing up to the night sky but the Sun is in the peak of its 11 year Solar Cycle and the European Space Agency are saying we could expect some more and no sooner said then done, on Tuesday the Sun spits out what has been measured as an X8.7, four times bigger than the one which so delighted everyone at the weekend.
The not so good news is the direction it came out of the Suns surface at because rather than hit us straight in the face like the last one, this one was emitted as the Sun was rotating away from us so we won't be seeing it lighting up the Sky unfortunately, the ESA putting out a statement that due to its location, this flare will likely NOT have any geomagnetic impacts on Earth.
The good news is that the current cycle, which began in late 2019, is predicted to reach its peak in July 2025 and as we approach it, we can expect more frequent and intense solar events, potentially leading to more opportunities to witness the awe-inspiring northern lights.
The largest ever Solar Flare came in 2003 and was so strong the X-ray detectors failed when they got to X17 but scientists estimate that it reached x28 strength but it only delivered a glancing blow to Earth as it shot down the side of us at a speedy 4,473,873 mph.
The proper name for a solar flare is a Coronal Mass Ejections which sounds like one of those films that should come in brown paper bags and be carried by shifty looking men in raincoats and they are not dangerous to us but  they can play havoc with electrical systems and can disrupt radio transmissions and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages.
So if your radio starts crackling or your lights flickering, it could be due to a coronal mass ejection. If you hear heavy breathing coming from that mac wearing neighbour it is probably another type of mass ejection we really shouldn't think too much about.

There Is Another Genocide Going On

 
While everyone is paying attention to the Israeli genocide going on in Palestine, there is another one happening right now in Africa in Sudan where Human Right Watch are saying Sudanese forces in the Darfur region are initiating a genocide against non-Arab ethnic communities.
 The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), along with allied militias, have been ethnically cleansing the region and since April 2023 and have killed tens of thousands in a systematic campaign to remove, including by killing, ethnic Massalit residents.
The HRW report found that women and girls were raped and subjected to other forms of sexual violence, detainees have been tortured and destroying critical civilian infrastructure, targeting neighborhoods
and sites, including schools, in Massalit displaced communities and then looted, burned, shelled, and razed neighborhoods to the ground, after emptying them of residents.
According to HRW, these attacks constitute “ethnic cleansing” as they appeared to be aimed at destroying in whole or in part the Massalit in West Darfur and have called for an investigation into genocide.
The International Criminal Court are currently investigating and have said that they have: 'grounds to believe that both the paramilitaries and the army are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
While Israel is rightly being castigated for their genocide in the Middle East, we shouldn't be blinded to the one going on in Africa.

Younger Generation Plonkers

Say what you want about the younger generation, prats, pillocks, plonkers and tosspots because they wont understand you anyway because young people appear unaware of some of the insults we throw at them, the Numpties.
In a survey of 2,000 under 28 year olds, 62% had never heard of Lummox, 60% didn't know what a Bampot was and Blighter (54%), Ninny (51%) and Cad (47%) were all insults which would sail over their innocent heads.
They may not all be Drips (42%), some may take umbrage at being called a Tosspot although 36% wouldn't, the dirty Toerags (34%) and a third would just look at you gormlessly if you said they were a pillock (33%) or a Nitwit (27%).    
If any of them had watched Only Fools and Horses they would know about Plonker although 25% said had never heard of it and 26% wouldn't know what a Git was which means i have wasted so many decent insults throw at under 28's because that is one i use most of the time.
So let's celebrate the Prats (25%) and Numpties (22%) and insult them even more because otherwise our words will be replaced by thing like 'Karen' or 'Boomer' which just do not have the same satisfaction as calling someone a miserbale git or a 9 carat gold Plonker.

Israel At Eurovision

The Eurovision is keen to keep its non-political stature but while Israel is performing after rewriting its song to stay in the competition, it is not going to be easy to stop nations slipping in their protest against what horrors the nation are inflicting on the Palestinians in the Middle East.
The main protests from the participants, and i am sure there will be some, will come in the Live Final when it can't be edited out and already we have seen some small signs of what's to come when the Irish singer, Bambie Thug, wrote anti-war slogans all over her body and was only allowed to go on stage once she changed it.
The opening singer wore a Palestinian Keffiyeh patterned cloth around his wrist which organisers said 'compromised the non-political nature of the event' and out out a statement which said that while the
Organisers understood the concerns and deeply held views around the war in the Middle East but the song contest is a music event and is not a competition between nations or governments.
Security around the Israeli singer, Eden Golan, has been trebled and there was a small protest outside the Malmo arena on Tuesday but a larger one is being promised for Thursday's second semi-final and Saturday's Final which has the potential to be a flashpoint.
I am conflicted as while i fully support the protests against the genocide in Gaza, and wonder about the moral compass of anyone who isn't, i feel for Golan who is just there to sing her song in a competition but i would like to see some protest by the performers, just small ones, to mark that we can't just pretend it isn't happening and on the Worlds largest music competition in front of hundreds of millions is the perfect place for us Europeans to show Israel that we know what you are doing, and do not support you. 
At today's rehearsal Golan was booed by the crowd as she performed her song Hurricane which was hastily rewritten after the original, 'October Rain' was deemed too controversial.
The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation has made an official complaint to the Eurovision Organisers about the booing and asked it to prevent a repeat of the incident but i can't see how it can be stopped in a live event.
Extra police have been drafted in from Denmark and Norway as protesters have been gathering outside the Arena with Palestinian flags, placards against Israeli participation and smoke canisters but with feelings running high amongst Golan's fellow musicians, the protests will probably also be coming from the stage and tonight's second semi-final will have Organisers nervous.

Stepping From Tory To Labour

In the last ten days, two Conservative MP's have defected to the Labour Party which raises a couple of questions around where our political parties now stand.
The Labour Party are much more centre left these days under Keir Starmer while The Conservatives have moved so far to the right that they are within touching distance of the parties they had dismissed as ideologically extreme right wing not that long ago so do the more moderate Tories see themselves as closer to the Labour Party than they do the headbangers which seemed to have taken over their own party?
That would be a concern for me that Labour have shifted so far away from their left-wing roots that Conservatives feel they fit in but i think the answer is much more mundane, they see the Conservatives as a sinking ship destined for the rocks of the upcoming General Election and any now switching sides are doing it out of preservation for their jobs.    
In a statement, the former Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke who made the short walk across the floor of the Commons today to the Labour benches said that she sees the modern Labour Party as the one looking to the future although it wasn't that long ago that she was at loggerheads with Labour's shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves over free school meals, campaigned for Liz Truss to become prime minister in 2022,  and defended the Rwanda deportation scheme so although a magnificent coup for Labour, is she really at home with the Socialists of the Labour Party?
She has said that she won't be standing at the next election so it can't be that she is hoping a change of party will save her seat and from her previous comments she hasn't become a  Karl Marx reading lefty so maybe we shouldn't look at it too deeply and just enjoy the obvious uncomfortable stomach punch to Rishi Sunak which maybe is just what it really is.

Eurovision 2024

37 Nations are called but only 1 is chosen and the reward is to host the following years Eurovision Song Contest because it's that brilliant time of the year again when the good, bad and the awful of Europe is asked to pop along and bring a tune with them and let us decide if we think it's much cop.
Sweden, as last years winners not only get to host it this year but get an automatic bye to the Final along with France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK which is handy for Germany, Italy and the Swedes because none of their songs are going to lead to their representatives pulling any muscles lifting the glass microphone trophy.
The rest navigate a semi-final appearance so many will drop by the wayside and my scoresheet has Australia, Azerabijan, Geiorgia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Norway and Ukraine putting on a brave face as they are told their services will no longer be required in Saturdays Final.
Of the rest Albania, Belgium, France, Portugal, Denmark, Latvia, Slovenia and Israel have shown up with ballads, Serbia's is so ploddingly slow it is in danger of going backwards but of the slow songs, Belgium's stands out but heart wrenching lyrics seem so last year because this year it is the turn of the electro-pop acts including Spain, Netherlands and the UK which has a very Frankie Goes To Hollywood Relax video performance about it with much semi-naked men in posing pouches doing things which will have the Director screaming go to the Long Shot at the cameramen.
Eurovision wouldn't be Eurovision without some nations being completely barmy and Finland has really upped it's billiantly loopy game this year with a man hatching from an Egg and singing while prancing around in his flesh coloured underpants which is as magnificent as it sounds and we really must hope it makes it out of the semi finals as a reward for being barking mad.
Ireland have taken a different path and have something called Ouija Pop complete with a screechy chorus and demons and devils cavorting onstage while Estonia have gone with a Zombie Folk band with a  song which sounds like a 3 minute football chant.
The Czech Republic singer lives in Brighton and her song is one of the ones i have placed an asterix next to as one i expect to end in the top 4 along with Croatia which is one hell of an earworm of a song called Rim Tim Tagi Dim about a young man selling his cow, saying goodbye to his cat and leaving for the big city which i guarantee will have you humming long after the next few acts.
As for the UK, i predict a left hand side of the board finish with Croatia, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Estonia and Poland fighting it out at the business end of the league table but as this is Eurovision (and i barely ever pick the winner) it could be any one of the novelty numbers, gothic witchcraft or rave throwbacks that take it and that's why i love Eurovision.

Hey Tories, Leave That Rishi There

I don't blame the Conservatives for refusing to call a General Election although after the Local Elections this week, they have been left in little doubt that when they do get around to it, a vast majority of them will be looking for new employment so Turkeys not voting for Christmas seems an apt metaphor.
The party, which brought the UK austerity, Brexit and an almost weekly scandal has been consistently trailing Labour by around 20 points in opinion polls and results from local elections held across England on Thursday where the Conservatives lost 453 councils appear to confirm that they are on their way out of power after 14 years.
The feeling of overwhelming incompetence surrounding the Tories was summed up when Boris Johnson turned up to vote in his South Oxfordshire district without a valid ID which was a rule he personally introduced in 2022.
With an election having to be called before January 2025 due to the five year Fixed-Term Parliament Act, the whispers are that the election will be November 14th and we know Keir Starmer will be in the red corner but it is unclear if Rishi Sunak will be cowering in the opposite one as gossip of his own side removing him continue to swirl.
As a Labour Party member i was obviously hoping that the Conservatives would get a good shellacking but i was hoping for a moderate walloping and i am now thinking maybe the trouncing was a bit too good and the hapless, unpopular Rishi will be replaced by somebody a lot more competent which could hinder Labours plans.
Labour lost the 2019 election by so much that they are going to have to undertake an almost unprecedented swing to take power, their starting position is so far back that in normal times it would take a minimum of two or possibly three general elections to overhaul and if the Conservatives kick out Rishi for someone the public could warm to such as the moderate Penny Mordant rather than an instant dislikable right wing nutjob such as Suella Braverman then the Labour lead could narrow considerably.
Hopefully Rishi is deluded enough to believe he could turn things around but the one thing the Conservatives are great at is stabbing their leader in the back, front and both sides if they think it is going to cost them power but i say leave Rishi alone, he is doing a great job, a great job of making sure the Tories will be a bad memory by 2025.    

Better Hold On Tight

 
Since 1973, Hurricanes have been measured by a five-category rating system with Category 1 for winds up to 95mph up to Category 5 with winds of 157 mph or more.
Due to Global Warming and warmer seas meaning Hurricanes becoming more intense meteorologists are arguing for a Category 6 to be introduced for storms with sustained winds of 192 mph or more.
Since 2013, there have been five global storms that would have made it to Category 6, when Hurricane Patricia headed towards Mexico in 2015 it had sustained winds over the Pacific Ocean of 215 mph and 2024 could add to that list as for the past year global ocean temperatures have been consistently breaking records and given that ocean heat is what fuels the biggest, most destructive hurricanes, scientists are worried.
Researchers at the University of Arizona have predicted an extremely active North Atlantic season with an estimated 11 hurricanes, five of them being Category 3 or higher and worryingly for anyone in their path, the hurricanes are intensifying quicker due to the warmer seas fueling them and therefore becoming much more dangerous as a city preparing for a 95mph hurricane could suddenly be hit by a 150mph one due to it intensifying just before it hits land.  
To add to the scenario, La Niña conditions in the Pacific could help form and intensify hurricanes this summer so batten down the hatches because it could get bumpy as man-made Climate change is here to remind us what happens when we foolishly mess with our environment.

Israel Lied About UNRWA

Following the bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital in northern Gaza, killing hundreds of people, Israel said they had bombed it to hit a terrorist base inside the hospital, then changed it to an Islamic Jihad rocket had fallen short and then when it was pointed out that they did not possess rockets of such power to do that much damage and hospital bosses explained that Israel already bombed two days previously and claimed Israel had pre-warned them it would attack it, Israel announced they would investigate but that seems to be what they do when they have caused the deaths of innocent civilians.
The usual manoeuvre is that Israel commits a massacre, Israel denies massacre, Israel announce an investigation of the massacre and then the news cycle moves on and the last massacre is replaced by another massacre and the cycle starts again and it is exactly what we have seen for decades with school bombings, UN building destroyed, aid worker and journalist deaths, death of children in the West Bank, mowing down of starving civilians at food trucks and exactly what we saw with the claim that the UN Agency, UNRWA, had been infiltrated by Hamas.
The Israeli government did not provide any further detail or evidence for their claim that 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 attacks and that hundreds of UNRWA's employees are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
An independent review, ordered by the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, found no evidence to support Israel’s claim that the agency has been infiltrated by Hamas and pointed out that UNRWA had been providing Israel with its staff lists since 2011 with no previous concerns raised.
Countries were warned that by withholding funding to the largest relief organization in Gaza, would risk a famine and cost lives.
After three months of the review which has cleared UNRWA and pointedly mentioned that Israel could not provide any supporting evidence, as Palestinian children literally starve to death, many countries are now resuming including Norway, Sweden, Australia, Japan, Ideland, Canada, Finland and Germany who who are the second largest donor to UNRWA.
In the UK MPs have written to foreign minister David Cameron, demanding that funding is restored without delay.
America, the largest donor, has yet to re-establish their aid despite the US’s own National Intelligence Council saying during the review that it had 'low confidence' in the Israeli claims.
So it was a lie but why would Israel lie when that lie would lead to a man-made famine threatening lives across the Gaza Strip?
Consider that Israel have killed over 34,000 Palestinians, have destroyed 80% of Gaza including the infrastructure and Health facilities and made plans to 'evacuate the whole of the Gaza Strip' and told the people of Gaza that they should 'evacuate and go to the vast expanses on the other side of Rafah at the Sinai border in Egypt', then it seems obvious they are trying to force the Palestinians off their land so they can move their own people in, a practise they have been been doing in the West Bank.
More evidence for the Genocide Claim against Israel currently before the The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and they won't be able to pretend to make an investigation to get out of that one.  

Journalism Under Fire

In a World where fake news, disinformation and conspiracy theories are rife, the freedom of journalists to report is under attack from the people who would really rather not have the spotlight shone into the murky corners they inhabit and that is not just in authoritarian states but is happening right under the noses of people in nations which are considered democratic.  
The UK Government have a draft legislation which would criminalise journalists if they reported or handled information that could be deemed likely to assist a foreign power and it was only the intervention by the European Court of Human Rights which called a halt plans to make MI5 and other agencies able to access journalists communications.
According to the annual World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), attacks on press freedom around the world are intensifying with political attacks on journalists including detention, suppression of independent media outlets and widespread dissemination of misinformation.
The Middle East regions performed the worst in terms of restrictions and controls on journalists by government forces through violence, arrests and draconian laws, compounded by violence against journalists.
Since October 2023, over 100 Palestinian reporters have been killed by Israel in Gaza and journalists have been killed in Sudan, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon while four of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists are Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran.
Latin America has increased political repression of journalism, Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, has boasted about his assault on the free press and has shut down the country’s biggest new agency and the US has performed badly due to increasing attacks on journalists from political officials, including public calls to imprison reporters.
There has been 20 journalists killed in Nigeria and reporters were targeted in Madagascar while covering anti-Government protests and Burkino Faso has suspended dozens of foreign news organisations after reporting on the alleged massacre of hundreds of civilians by the military.
In Russia, over 1500 journalists have fled abroad since 2022 and Belarus has banned all independent media under the pretext of combating extremism while China has detained more journalists than any other country in the world and reporting in Afghanistan and North Korea is banned and Vietnam and Myanmar have been undertaking mass imprisonment of journalists.
Journalists gather, assess, create and present news and information to the public, ensuring citizens are informed while acting as a check on power, holding the government and other institutions accountable and stand as a bulwark against a tide of misinformation which is exactly why government and other institutions are trying to undermine and lessen the freedom for us to do our jobs effectively.

Your Medical Sex But Societal Gender

When the NHS announced that they will be working towards same sex hospital wards, the inevitable question was always going to be what about the transgender patients and they shot back with the perfect answer, they will base it on their biological sex.
There does seem to be much confusion around a persons sex and their gender which are two very different things, your sex is determined by what set of Chromosomes nature gave you but your gender can be whatever you decide you want it to be and no medical procedure can change your chromosomes so when i was growing up what we called a 'sex change' was actually a gender change, you can chop things off or have things added but your sex is going to be the same because you have an X or a Y.
It was explained to me a long time ago that Medical science has a pretty clear definition because as well as the most common pairings, you also get XXY, XXX, X and XYY but simply if there is no Y Chromosome present, its female, if there is one then it's male so you could have as many X's as you liked, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXY if it was possible but that one Y would mean male and because the female is XX and 50% of the chromosomes comes from the mother, one of them has to be X which is why it is impossible for humans to get a Y or a YY.
Gender on the other hand means you may look, sound, act or even have the genitals of the opposite sex, the World Health Organisation defines your gender as 'the socially constructed characteristics of men, women, boys, and girls that relate to biological sex' which is a bit woolly but kinda means your gender is whatever you decide your gender is and not what society says it should be based on socially agreed-upon characteristics and that is when we get into the whole thorny world of public bathrooms and pronouns.
I am therefore fine with medical bodies basing a persons 'sex' on their biological make-up, i could turn into a man tomorrow and start wearing mans clothes and even have genital surgery but i would still have the internal workings of a woman which could need to be dealt with medically and i wouldn't be getting a prostate anytime soon.    
The bottom line is that the boundary between a persons sex and their gender gets confused and you may get someone on a hospital wards who considers themselves a woman but is biologically 'male' and would prefer to be on a female only ward but that is a question for society to answer around same gender wards because it is rightly up to each individual to determine their gender and their choice should be respected but when it comes to the NHS and medical issues, your sex is decided in the womb and medically you would treated as male or female depending on the internal workings of your body.

Nice One Humza

You do have to wonder what was going on in the Scottish First Ministers mind when he sacked the Greens from his Government.
With the SNP's holding a majority of 1 in the Scottish Parliament, by sacking the two Greens for being too left wing, he went from a minority Government to one with less seats than the opposition who must as thought it was Christmas, Birthday and Hogmanay all rolled into one and immediately put in for a vote of no confidence in the SNP leader Humza Yousaf,  and the Greens, still stinging from their ousting said they would vote with the opposition against Yousaf.
With parliamentary arithmetic now against him he tried to talk around the only ALBA member to join him but she must have remembered that when she left the SNP, he said she was 'no loss' and told him to do one so Yousaf was left with little choice but to jump before he was pushed and resigned.
Immediately the SNP went looking for a candidate to replace him and the early favourite is Kate Forbes, the same woman who was forced to back down in her leadership campaign last time due to being too religious and getting herself in a heap of trouble by espousing views which included being against abortions, premarital sex, same sex marriage and trans rights which she disagreed with due to her deep seated faith.
With a general election looming,they are now looking towards John Swinney who only retired a year ago to spend more time with his family to come back as an interim leader but whatever happens, it really is in tune with the madness that has been happening with politics south of the border. 

What's So Great About Britain Then?

Britain was a rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of continental Europe but today in 1707 the Scots joined up with Wales and England and we became known as Great Britain but still remained a rainy, windswept island in the North Atlantic.
Before any Scots make jokes about how it was them who made us Great, it referred to the increased size of Britain rather than how magnificent it was now we had bagpipes and haggis in the mix but over time the 'Great' in our name has become more of the how distinguished and illustrious us Brits are rather than the additional 30,078 square miles tagged onto the top end of England but other nations may wonder just what is so Great about us Brits, well let me explain.

The seaside. All countries that have a coastline have a seaside and most have piers but it was us Brits who came up with the idea of the Pleasure pier, some of which were built while Napoleon was still stomping around Europe and Beethoven was just finishing his 6th Symphony and was starting work on his 7th.

Sport. We gave the World football, rugby, cricket, field hockey, squash, tennis, badminton, darts, snooker, golf, rowing, boxing, curling, horse racing and something called Bandy whatever the hell that is. Sure the rest of the World are now better than us at all of them without us Brits, they wouldn't have the sports to be better than us at.

Comedy. If there is one thing us Brits excel at, it's having a strange sense of humour and the sarcastic, self-deprecating sense of humour can be an acquired taste i agree but we laugh at things which are funny, unfunny, tragic or just downright stupid which is why we have shows such as Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses, The Young Ones, Allo' Allo', Monty Python and Father Ted to mock pretty much everything from religion to War to Interstellar Space.

The BBC. The oldest national broadcasting organisation in the world and easily the best thing you could spend 46p a day on for no annoying ad breaks.  

Music. Yes we have not only come up with bands such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Sex Pistols, Muse, Black Sabbath and ELO but we do have a knack of coming up with some amazing guitar players also so pluck your g-string proudly Slash, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler, Matt Bellamy, Johnny Marr and Tony Iommi to name a few.  

Chocolate. I don't know what everyone else does to their chocolate but wow you are bad at it.  

Inventions. We can turn on the light bulb in the living room and watch the television while drinking some cool beer from the refrigerator or go on a computer on the World Wide Web to watch trains or discover the theory of evolution or Gravity and explain it on the telephone in the English language thanks to British inventors.

Punk. Without British bands like the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash, Buzzcocks and The Stranglers to inspire later generations, today's music would be...well...even worse.

Rhyming Slang. Only the Brits could take a perfectly normal thing, find something that rhymes with it and then shorten it even more so we could ask about your plates and not mean your kitchenware, your boat and not mean the ones with oars, your Gregory and not mean your relative and mention Bristol's and Hampton's and not mean in any geographical way whatsover.

So Britain has many faults, the food, our politicians, the right wing numpties and our not so pleasant history of slavery and empire but there are a few things we can point at and say, yeah, maybe we are not so bad after all .