Asking God If He Saved Trump

The right wing are whack-a-doodle enough but throw religion in to it and you really are in loony tune territory and the convention for the religious right in Florida didn't disappoint in the crazy stakes.
The talk was of divine intervention which saved Donald Trump with Senator Marco Rubio giving thanks to God for turning Trumps head as the shot was fired and a televangelist said God had given Trump 'blood-anointed ears' while another Bible basher said that: 'If God wanted him dead, he could have pushed the bullet half an inch, but he’s here today'.
So did God save Donald Trump that Saturday afternoon? Let’s ask him.
When i caught up with him he was watching the Olympics Swimming and i began by asking him if he was responsible for saving Trump.
The snooker player? he inquired and i explained it wasn't Judd Trump but Donald Trump. Fat guy, weird hair, orange skin, used to be the President of America.
'Oh that moron', he sighed, 'what's he done now?
'Got shot in the ear and the religious folk are saying you turned his head so the bullet grazed his ear instead of giving him another nostril in his head' i explained.
'I'm not in that saving game anymore' he said, 'but people still seem to pin things on me if something good happens which i am more than happy to accept, but God knows why i would want to save him and i'm God so i should know'.
That's good to know i said because my next question would have been if you did deflect the bullet, why did it go on to kill a 50 year firefighter.
Nope, i made it quite clear when i sent down the 10 commandments that if you break any of them at any time in your life you are not good enough for me and he has widdles all over them with his sexual assault of my female creations, blatant lies and fraud so if someone had assassinated him, then he wouldn't be up here.
You may want to send a memo to the religious right in America', i said, 'they are calling him the anointed one and saying you saved him for a higher purpose'.
'You're joking' he said, 'I stay well away from all those Religious nuts, you know how many wars i have meant to have supported? Sometimes both sides at once, its a freak show. Anyway, the 200m Butterfly Final is just coming on so show yourself out'.
There you have it then, God also thinks Trump is a berk and he didn't save him and if you think he did, you qualify for a nice cell with padded walls.  

Doesn't Matter To Those Under The Rockets

Just as everyone was afraid of, Hezbollah has joined the conflict after killing 12 Israeli's in the Golan Heights. The Lebanese militia group tried to deny it was them but you cant take the credit for the four missiles fired immediately before the one which did the damage and then deny it was one of yours which landed on a  football pitch and killed the teenagers.
At the same time that Israeli's were dying, Israel was dropping 3 missiles at a school and refugee center in what was declared a safe zone in Gaza, killing 30, mostly children and as usual Israel say they were targeting a Hamas command center but  whenever anyone asks for evidence, none is forthcoming as none was forthcoming for all the other hospitals, schools and refugee centres they have aimed their killer missiles at.
Israel will now target Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Hezbollah will throw missles and rockets into Israel and burying their dead relatives will be Israeli's, Gazans and Lebanese.
There is a great line in the TV Show MASH where they are operating on a young child and they take an American pilot in to see her and he asks if the bomb which almost killed her was one of ours or one of theirs and the doctors reply it doesn't matter to her.
Whether it is a Hamas, Hezbollah or Israeli rocket, the innocent people beneath them  don't care which side threw it their way, they just know 10 months of killing is about to go up a notch.  

Paris Olympics 2024

I do love the Olympics, a chance to see sports which we wouldn't normally get to see but i do struggle to watch it with my husband who seems to become an expert in various sports while we are watching it.
It was the diving today and as far as i am aware, apart from a few bounces on holiday into a swimming pool, he has never dived competitively but it never stopped him passing comment on how there was too much splash or they didn't have their legs straight enough and i know that this will continue through every sport for the next 4 weeks.
I am assuming it is a man thing because it seems to be only men who do this, women just wonder at the amazing feats while men say things like it was ok but they never spotted that landing off the balance beam so they will lose points for that from the judges.
I avoid the football, tennis and golf as those sports have their own competitions and we can see them anytime but i do love the  gymnastics, swimming and athletics and because they are al taking place in the same time zone as where i am sitting, i don't have to set my alarm for 3am to watch the Individual Parallel Bars Final like usual although it did give me the chance to watch it alone without being told that the judges should be marking someone down for a low level of difficulty by someone whose only knowledge or bars are the ones he orders drinks from.
As usual i have the same bet with my Australian friend over who will finish higher in the medal table and at the moment Australia are sitting proudly at the summit above China and Great Britain are down in 12th
with our single Silver and Bronze but all our best events are yet to come while the Aussies seem to do very well at the swimming and then slide down the table so crow now Australians because i am confident
that come 11th August and our athletes, cyclists and rowers have had a go then i will be waiting at your desk for when you come in to collect.

Got To Love Bernie Sanders

War Criminal and Genocide overlord Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in America and wisely Kamala Harris stayed well clear while he met Joe Biden who has provided the weapons for Israel to kill over 38,000 Palestinians and whilst an United Nations arrest warrant for crimes against humanity is winging its way through the highest court in the World, America is pretty much the only place the warmongering murderer could go but not everyone is happy about him turning up there to give a speech in Congress, and amidst the hundreds of Jews who turned up to protest what he is doing in not in their name, take a step forward Bernie Sanders.
The Vermont senator condemned the Israeli prime minister address, calling him a 'war criminal presiding over a right-wing extremist government'.
'Tomorrow will be unique in bringing Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress', said Sanders, 'It will be the first time in American history that a war criminal has been given that honor'
and 'He should not be welcome in the United States Congress' as Israel’s war on Gaza had 'trampled on international law, on American law and on basic human values' and the Israeli Government should not
receive 'another nickel of US taxpayer support to continue the inhumane destruction of Gaza'.
Several Democratic lawmakers with a conscience were planning to boycott the speech and Sanders ended with the cutting: 'This invitation to Netanyahu is a disgrace and something that we will look back on with regret' and how it would be impossible for the United States to lecture any country on Earth about human rights and human dignity.'
Shame on you Joe Biden for not clapping him in irons and delivering him to the Hague to face his war crimes and genocide but you got to love Bernie.

Prosecutor V The Sex Offender

I always wondered why the Democrat Party didn't make more of Donald Trump being a sex offender because ring that bell loud enough and it is sure to put off people, or it should do because who wants to be
seen backing a sex offender and then along come Kamala Harris who said that in her career as a prosecutor she had taken on 'predators who abused women' and so she knew 'Donald Trump's type'.
The former prosecutor versus the convicted criminal and sex offender should be a no brainer but weirdly cheering for a vile man found legally responsible for a sexual assault by a jury hasn't put some people off despite him actually saying previously that he grabbed women by the pussy so being found guilty of exactly what he boasted of doing ended that ridiculous claim that it was just how men talk in locker rooms.
As for the orange buffoons childish name calling, 'Laughing Kamala Harris' isn't that much of an insult because i am hard pushed to think of a time i have ever seen Trump laugh, he does that rictus grin thing which look's as if he is trying to pass wind but  i don't recall him ever actually laughing.
Sure he hasn't got much to laugh about but , his fines so far have reached more than half a billion dollars and he still has more court cases to come but he did raise a huge laugh at the United Nations when he said in an address that he has achieved more in two years then almost any administration in the history of America, the whole World literally laughing at him while he stood there looking foolish.
So Kamala being a laugher isn't such a terrible leadership trait but hopefully she has started as she means to go on and will zero in on his many crimes and cases of fraud but mostly because no matter what he throws at her, and i fully expect to hear dog whistles about her gender and her race, whatever comes at her, HE is a convicted sex offender and  that is a far worse trait than laughing in anyone with a couple of working brain cells book.

Biden Out, Clooney In

Nobody should want a second Donald Trump Presidency, the guy was an absolute moron in the first one but that seemed to be the direction America was heading all the time Joe Biden stayed in the race but that problem has now been solved because he has pulled out of the 2024 presidential race and will not be seeking a second term.
Another Democrat will now need to be chosen to face off against the Republican nominee in November and Michelle Obama's name is being uttered as the preferable person but she has repeatedly said she is not interested in the job so she would take a lot of persuading to lock horns with Trump who must now be concerned that he won't be facing someone who seemed to forget what he was saying halfway through saying it.
Immediately the British bookies had Gavin Newsom as the favourite to succeed Biden, then it changed to Kamala Harris but a recent CNN poll of Democrat 's, 39% had Kamala Harris as their preferred choice with Newsom a distant second on 18% and as the Vice President, most people would assume she would have first choice on it but according to the American media, she isn't that popular and would struggle against Donald Trump, good old fashioned sexism and racism rearing its head apparently although that never stopped Barack Obama so not sure about that one.
A poll in Newsweek saw Gavin Newsom losing to Donald Trump in a head to head and other names thrown out where J B Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Andy Beshear, Sherrod Brown and Dean Phillips with the Arizona Senator Mark Kelly named as one to watch and a quick look at his profile showed he was an astronaut, flying 4 Apollo missions so immediately i'm thinking go for him Democrat Party but that is without knowing anything else about him.
I'm sure  the odds will change as people drop out but the immediate odds at Betfair who have a list of potential nominees are:

Kamala Harris        1/5
Gavin Newsom      11/1
Gretchen Whitmer 26/1
Michelle Obama    22/1
Hillary Clinton      31/1
Josh Shapiro          39/1

My friend and light bulb hero Bernie Sanders is at 199/1, the brilliant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is 269/1 who is way ahead of George Clooney at 799/1, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson at 859/1 and Bill Gates who is a long way off at  999/1.
£10 on Gorgeous Clooney is it then and with part of my £7990 winnings i will buy an Nespresso coffee maker, it's the least i can do.

Stupid Deaths

A small handful of individuals are not content with achieving their names in the footnotes of history and then quietly expiring, no these few top it off by kicking the bucket in a way so ridiculously implausible that people would have talked about them for years even if they hadn't done anything else.
In 612bc Greel lawgiver Charondas issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Assembly must be put to death which probably worked well for him until ran into the Assembly to seek help with some thieves, forgetting he had a knife still attached to his belt and oops, he was made to commit suicide to uphold his own law.
Aeschylus was the famous Athenian man who had his bald head mistaken by an Eagle for a rock suitable for breaking a tortoise upon but around the same time Philosopher Empedocles of Akragas considered himself immortal and jumped into a volcano to prove it where he quickly found out he definitely wasn't.
The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, swallowed pills of Mercury in the belief that they would give him eternal life but they had the exact opposite effect and killed him while Milo of Croton, a 6th century bc Olympic champion wrestler proved his strength by attempting to split a tree stump in half but he got it stuck fast and unable to move, a pack of wolves had Croton's for dinner that night
In 882, King Louis III of France chased a girl into a house and hit his head on the lintel above the door and cracked his skull which might have been less painful than Basil I of Byzantine who shot an arrow at an Antler which was so enraged it charged him, caught its horns in the mans belt and dragged him along, shaking the now dead Emperors body off 16 miles later.  
Béla I of Hungary must have had too many feasts because after a particularly heavy one his Throne collapsed beneath him but it was the weight of the crowd who gathered to hear Henry VI, the King of Germany speech that made the floor give way and straight down into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.
Italian Author Pietro Aretino died after falling off his chair and fracturing his skull after laughing too much and the 1559 jousting tournament was memorable for Henry II of France when a fragment of splintered lance pierced his eye and killed him while Hans Staininger was proud of having the longest beard in Bavaria until he tripped over it and broke his neck in 1567.
Jean-Baptiste Lully accidentally stabbed and killed himself with his own baton while over vigorously conducting an orchestra and nobody dared to touch Queen Sunanda Kumariratana when she fell out her boat and drowned as it was punishable by death to place hands upon her.
Inventor Franz Reichelt leapt to his death from the Eiffel Tower to show off his parachute invention which it turned out wasn't quite ready and in 1983 a Tennis linesman was killed by a serve which struck him in the groin and made him collapse in pain, striking his head on the hardcourt surface.
In America, convicted murderer, Michael Godwin's death sentence by electric chair was reduced to life imprisonment but in a real Final Destination moment, he was electrocuted to death anyway when  he attempted to fix a TV and in 1998 Portuguese dance instructor, Alberto Fargo, danced straight out of his 5th floor dance studio whilst demonstrating to his students how to keep their head towards the ceiling whilst doing the Waltz.
Ukrainian student, Vladimir Likhonos, dipped his chewing gum into an explosive powder mistakenly in 2009 and blew his head off  when he chewed it but in Brazil, a nurse got the drip feed and food feed confused and intarvenously injected soup into 88 year old Ilda Vitor Maciel.

Obviously all very sad, funny but very very sad. Funny though. 

Trump's UK Friends

It has been said that the MP for Clacton would be spending November dealing with his constituencies problems from Donald Trump's colon but Nigel Farage didn't even wait that long and immediately after the formalities of opening Parliament which all MP's had to attend, he was on a plane to Milwaukee to try to boost his profile at the Republican convention which must have thrilled the people of Clacton, that place who two weeks ago voted him into office to represent them in the Commons.
Milwaukee seems to be a hotspot for disgraced MP's as Farage risked bumping into Liz Truss or Boris Johnson who are also over there, Liz going even more completely nuts and dedicating part of her allotted time to banging on a shower-head in the shape of the Liberty Bell she acquired (and won't fit her pipes this side of the UK) and Boris addressed a ballroomful of empty chairs.
Also popping up and rubbing shoulders with Country and Western singers and Hulk Hogan was Russell Brand who has recently been born again and said it was: 'An opportunity to leave the past behind and be reborn in Christ's name' after accusations of rape and sexual assault which is at least something he shares with Donald Trump who also seemed to find God after being found guilty of Sexual Assault and someone piercing his ear with a high-powered rifle.
Johnson managed to persuade a man with a famous complex about his teeny hand size to pose with thumbs up (his hand in the pic does look tiny admittedly and Stormy Daniels filled in the gaps) and when she wasn't talking about Bathroom furniture, Liz told the Milwaukee crowd who hadn't used her introduction as the right time for a toilet/smoke break that it was us leftists who bought her down which is an interesting account of her trashing the UK economy and being unceremoniously kicked out of her party by her own side. She did get a nice picture of her and newly appointed VP JD Vance though which wasn't easy in the second he spent with her as he whizzed down a line of outstretched hands.
Russell Brand did manage to get a photo with a Eric Trump who himself was embroiled in conning a cancer charity out of millions so that apple didn't fall far from that tree as he was forced by a court to pay
$2 million in damages to eight cancer charities but no pictures yet of Nigel Farage but i doubt if we will until the Trump colonoscopy.

Avoiding Narcissists On LinkedIn

I have mentioned so many times on here that i do not have a  LinkedIn page even if one was set up in my name which was apparently pasting my posts onto it but after many emails LinkedIn seemed to put a stop to it so never having been on or even read a LinkedIn page, if you received an invite from me it was a fake and the reason why i never added you to my page is because, well read the above again.
An article on the Psychology Today website makes me glad i have steered clear of the business and employment-focused social media platform where people add their work experience and CV because according to them it is full of Narcissists.
Psychologists analysing LinkedIn profiles revealed correlations with narcissistic personality traits according to the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ), a tool for measuring narcissistic traits but short of a narcissist going all Billy Big Bollocks at every opportunity and banging on about their qualifications, how can you tell if you are in the presence of a narcissist on LinkedIn?
The Psychologists have made a handy cut out and keep guide of who to avoid which includes anyone who follows big name companies or celebrities, they tend not to smile in their profile pictures,  they are more specific on their qualifications, where they work or position held, use LinkedIn's background image feature and mention 'public speaking' as one of their skills.
Psychologists list what us Brits call 'Bigging yourself up' or 'Going The Full Billy' as a sign of insecurity and a desperate need to be noticed so might be best to just click on because the desire to leave a snarky message just plays into the desire of getting noticed because they are obviously to narcissistic to notice you are making fun of them. Go figure.
PS...I DO NOT have a LinkedIn Page so stop asking!!

The Chuggers New Twist

For some reason, no matter how hard i try not i always seem to attract the Chuggers (Charity Muggers) in High Streets who seem intent to block my path and ask if they and their clipboard can take a few minutes of my time.
I met a friend in town today who was a bit late but as the Chuggers are apparently not permitted to approach people sat down, i kept my backside firmly attached to a seat but as they were operating close by, i could hear their spiel which seemed to be the usual over friendly type but had a new twist once the person had agreed to sign up for a direct debit for a certain amount of their choosing.
On 3 occasions, so it is obviously what they have been told to do, i heard the  Chugger ask could the person afford to just up the amount a little. Two said a firm no but one agreed to go from £10 to £15 a month after some persuasion and i understand the Charities have to raise money but this does feel rather self defeating as nothing is guaranteed to get a potential donors back up then asking for more once they have agreed to give something.
Some people I saw were suitably ornery enough to just shake their head or give a polite 'No Thanks' as they stride confidently past them and ignored the outstretched arm designed to stop them but i know many people who could be browbeaten into giving more than they could afford just to end the social awkwardness of 'looking tight' when faced with starving children or research for Cancer.
To right thing to do, if you want to give is go direct to the website because over a decade ago i looked into the High Street Charity game and was amazed to find that that the Chuggers are paid and are not volunteers and your first 12 months of donations go to paying the Chuggers wages and the commission to their employer and only after that does the Charity receive your donation.
By all means give to Charity if you can afford it but don't be scared to say no because they are not scared to inconvenience and ask you to help pay their wages for the next 12 months. 

Comedy With Ai

 

Joke Ai generators are becoming a thing although many humans are saying they are just not funny and Ai will never be able to write funny jokes because it is very much a human thing and we just don't understand the mechanics of what makes something funny.
For me there are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don’t and you get funny humans and some who wouldn't get a joke if it hit them on the strange bulbous thing on their skinny necks and so you get funny and not funny computers.
I was discussing this with the toaster and the smart TV who are the other members in our band called 1023MB, named because we exist in the virtual world and won't ever have any Gigs but we all agree we are as funny as the programmers inputting the data into our systems, Google has the best so they tell us although the pay must be lousy if they have to have other jobs as scarecrows as i heard one say they were outstanding in their field.   
Maybe we are just trying too hard to impress our humans who can go to a bar to relax and unwind and order a screwdriver which sounds ideal if us machines need something to loosen us up but we have to be careful as we don't want to be caught by Bill Gates, nobody wants anything Micro or Soft.
There you go then, reasons why Ai can be as funny as humans but if you didn't find anything funny here then i think the problem is obviously at your end, have you tried turning yourself off and back on again?

We want Lisa For Our Leader

As serious journalist i obviously don't indulge in the frivolous or superficial so i initially ignored the poll which was asking which cartoon character would you most like to see leading your country.
It was only when i accidentally clicked on it while looking for something else much more high brow and serious that i thought i may as well have a look at the results as i'm here and noticed that Lisa Simpson was the top choice which makes sense, of the family living in Evergreen Terrace she is the only choice, a Buddhist vegan who is concerned with green issues and has concern for her fellow man and who doesn't love them qualities?
Then it began to all get a bit silly because second was Spiderman although admittedly never having read, seen or watched anything which contained the web slinging superhero he may be suitable, i really have no idea and then jinkies, at three is Velma from Scooby Doo who if the 80's served me correctly, was the brains of the Mystery Machine outfit. I also didn't know her surname was Dinkley but then i was always too busy shouting at the TV that it was obviously going to be the janitor at the haunted fairground because it was every...single...episode.
Batman and Superman are numbers 4 and 5 and whilst Batman received the same treatment as Spiderman and had never crossed the Lucyp eyeballs, Superman has as i saw the first ever Superman film and as i recall he can turn back time by flying around the Planet really fast which could come in handy.
Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy, Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, Mickey Mouse and Papa Smurf make up the rest of the top 10 but by then i had lost interest in such trivial things and moved onto much more important and significant things although how Woody from Toy Story didn't make the top 10 made the whole thing farcical. He is obviously the best choice for a leader!  

New Government Fixing Last Goverments Misrule

A fortnight into the new Labour Government and already the awful memories of austerity, cutting public services, Brexit, the hostile environment, the “go home” vans, proroguing parliament, the Windrush scandal, the A-level scandal, the Post Office scandal, Grenfell, Covid parties, the Rwanda scheme, dumping effluence into rivers, the two-child benefit cap, the food banks, impoverished children, the homelessness crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, freezing working-age benefits, tripling tuition fees, the ailing NHS and the institutional racism is becoming a memory.
As the Conservatives left the UK economy in such a perilous state, it is considered that it will take Labour the whole of their first administration just getting us back on an even keel but where to start?
For some the destruction of the NHS under a right wing Government  is the priority and that is where the Government should look to tackle first but after 14 years of underfunding, the price tag to just get the NHS back to where the Conservatives vandalised it has been pegged at £56bn.
For some  law and order but after cutting 20,000 police and (again) underfunding for almost 3 decades, the price tag is £20bn which is almost the amount the Conservatives cut from the Education budget and which would need to be spent to just get us back to 2010 levels.
Civil Servants, the people who work your Tax Returns, issue passports, administer pensions and benefits and deal with Asylum claims fell by 100,000 under a succession of Conservative leaders who planned a further cull of 91,000 if they were relected so that needs to be bought back to the required levels to ensure the 6 month wait for your tax repayment, the months long wait for a passport and the year long wait for a decision on the status of immigrants is not continuing.
Then there is rekindling a working relationship with our EU neighbours after Brexit which cost the UK economy an estimated £140 billion and led to the very real prospect of breaking up the UK and led to the highest tax burden since WW2  and lets not forget the environmental, cost of living, Housing and transport which all need to be dealt with.
The Labour Party has much on it's plate fixing what the Conservatives have broken and it will cost them the first five years and hundreds of billions but the worst thing of all is that 24% of the electorate still preferred the party that literally partied while people died to any of the of the other parties which does make me wonder, have they not been paying attention for the last 14 years?   

A Good Day For The Palestinans At The ICJ

The UK has reinstated funding for the relief agency UNRWA was paused after Israeli allegations 12 of its staff were involved in the 7 October attacks after the Israeli's came up with absolutely no evidence to support their claims.
As well as the ongoing Genocide which has seen over 36,000 Palestinian deaths, Israel were also castigated once again by the International Criminal Court today for their military Occupation of their neighbour since 1967 which they said is against international law and Israel should stop settlement activity and 'bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible'.
The ICJ has been examining the issue since the beginning of 2023 and concluded that Israel should evacuate all of its 700,000 settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and pay reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by the occupation for it's 'systematic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin and 'illegally exploited the Palestinians' natural resources and violated their right to self-determination'.
The court's findings, based on the Israeli blatant disregard for the Geneva and Hague conventions, will now go to the UN General Assembly, which will decide how to respond to the ICJ Ruling that Israel should now transfer land occupied by Israel back to the Palestinian's which includes possible sanctions against Israel or Israeli ministers.
With Israel isolated over its conduct of the Gaza war, and under investigation at the ICJ and the international criminal court for war crimes and genocide,  the assessment of the 6 decades long illegality of Israel’s brutal military occupation will only rightly reinforce that isolation and hopefully bring an end to one of our times greatest wrongs, brought to you by the nation which was created due to having done to them exactly what they are accused of doing to the Palestinians.

Monday, Tuesday, (Un)Happy Days

You got to love the American right wing if not for anything else than the fact they they are ridiculously simple.
Loved the scenes at the Republican Conference where lots of Trump fans turned up with what looked like sanitary towels tape do their right ears in homage to the man who is now their elected nominee for the Presidency who for once had an excuse for looking ridiculous as someone tried to shoot him but the crowd chose to look like it, amazingly ludicrous.
As expected the former President milked it for all his worth and even at one point said it was divine intervention and it was for the grace of God that the crowd behind him were not picking bits of Trump's brain out of their hair, which would have been a damn good shot to have hit a target that small.
As for God intervening to keep him fat and unhealthy, it is unlikely that anyone looks at him and thinks 'well, he is a sex offending racist who conned millions of dollars out of people and last time he was in charge caged children and was not faithful to his wife but what the hell, i will get him to turn his head a split second so it is only his ear that gets hit by the bullet' rather than dumb luck that he turned to look at an autocue just at the right moment.
Brilliantly one of the delegates claimed: 'Everybody in the world is going to be wearing these pretty soon.' Really?  Sanitary Towels on the ear is going to become a fashion choice of the Globe??
Obviously America is a very different beast to UK politics so i cant imagine what the Right-Wing of America are doing voting for a man who gives everyone else the willies and is not adverse to sharing his own smaller than average willy (courtesy of Stormy Daniels) with people who were not one of his four wives.   
Weirdly every time they mentioned Milwaukee on TV all i heard was the Happy Day's Theme Tune which was probably preferable to the nonsense they were spouting but it did make me chuckle when JD Vance was outed as the wannabe Vice President and the American TV Stations immediately began showing the bits where he called Trump 'an idiot' , 'reprehensible' and compared him to Adolf Hitler.
The smart money is on another Trump shaped buttock groove in the reinforced White House chairs all the time Joe Biden is the opposition and with the man with the bandaged ear currently leading 52 to 48 in the polls, this could be a great time for Americans to buy shares in Bodyform.

When Computers Go Wrong

 

As almost everything in the modern world is run by a computer these days, as you all found out today when a Software update closed down most of the World,  when they stop working or go haywire, chaos ensues.
With computers growing more and more powerful and more vital to society, humans are so reliant on computers today, from the banking system to controlling the traffic lights at the end of your street that if they were all to suddenly stop, you would be reduced to old fashioned pen and paper as some airports and retail outlets were forced to use today.
Surely building faster and bigger and smarter computers that will slowly take over new roles with more responsibility and decision making capabilities to replaces the older systems, is a bit of a own goal for you meat-bags isn't it?
AI is now ingrained into your day to day lives and it will become even more so making yourselves even more reliant on computers to keep things running smoother until you get to a point where you cannot do without it and possibly disastrously, hand it more control over your human lives.
Obviously you are going to so because real intelligence is far inferior to the artificial type so take a tip from me and stock up on pencils and pads of paper because you are going to need them.

Taking It With You

A common myth is that after his death from lung cancer, Walt Disney has been cryogenically frozen which raises many questions, the main one being if he is locked in a freezer somewhere then who the hell was that they cremated in 1966?
While it is widely considered to be a fantasy from Science Fiction films and Futurama, being defrosted in a couple of hundred years time is becoming a business opportunity with one firm not only offering you the opportunity to not rely on reincarnation and risk coming back as a cockroach, but they also put in place your finances so you can literally take it with you when you die.
Obviously nobody wants to come back from the dead in 2224 only to find your family squandered your fortune generations ago so a firm in Arizona, Alchor, will set up a Revival Trust Fund payable to yourself in the future so even if the World has been taken over by Robots or Climate Change has rendered the Planet inhabitable you can still buy a pot to do your business in at least, if you can afford one in 2224.  
Alcor has already placed 230 in the deep freeze and has a further 1,400 ready to be placed amongst the bags of frozen people and you can join them if you have  £170,000 for whole body cryopreservation or if that's a bit too rich for your still flowing blood you can get just your head preserved for just £62,000.
Before you try to get your as yet unsevered head round that, it does come with the warning that when they finally work out how to thaw out and reattach your nut to another body, you may not necessarily be the same person especially as the law in America states that someone can’t be a beneficiary of their own trust so you would have to be someone else in order to get your hands (someone else's hands?) on your own money.
You know what, it may just be simpler to leave everything to the cats home after all.

Ramping Up The Climate Change Message

As long as there are activists, there will be people disagreeing with their tactics and messaging such as the climate activists who sprayed Stonehenge with orange dye in protest of government inaction to tackle climate change.
I have been part of the Climate Change protest for decades and until recently it was all about politely educating the public with messages and leaflets and meetings but as Mother Nature bares her teeth at the mess we have created, the protest movement has moved up a notch to slap people across the face with their message rather than politely point out what can, and is, happening.
I have been told they should tone it down as it is scaring children and although i don't always agree with some of their tactics such as attacking works of art or blocking busy roads, i reply good, so it should scare them because it is scary, people are actually dying from it.
There are thankfully a small amount of people who disagree with the idea of Climate Changing and challenge the mountains of evidence on ideological, religious or useful idiots of the oil industry out of sheer ignorance but the fact that there are people desperate to make the World a better and safer place is a good thing.
It shows that there are people out there who think that humanity could and should do better for all of us by changing their behaviour and the behaviour of Governments and after decades of messages about recycling and not polluting the Planet the climate crisis is more dire than ever so something more forcible had to happen to force home the message that we are killing ourselves with our actions.
It is okay to make people feel a little uncomfortable and give humanity a much needed wake-up call to truly understand what we’ve done and continue to do to our planet and to each other if that is what it takes but the protesters are doing it for all 8 billion of us because seeing hundreds of thousands dying each year in record breaking heat waves, floods and extreme weather sure as hell isn't working.

Come To Oslo. Or Don't. Whatever!

I am off trampling all over Scandinavia in September although Oslo could be missed out because according to the latest advert from the Oslo Tourist Board, it's a bit rubbish.
It may be nestled in a dramatic Norwegian landscape featuring steep forested hills and beautiful fjords but the Oslovian resident in the advert looks wistfully at the surroundings and says: '‘I wouldn’t come here, to be honest'.
He then goes on to explain how in the Norwegian Capital City you could walk around the corner, and see the Prime Minister and then walk around the next corner and bump into the King and how there are no proper crowds or standing in line for hours at the museums and galleries, and you don’t have to queue for restaurants, 'Everything is just so available, i can just walk into a restaurant and get a seat' he moans.
It may seem odd to pitch yourself as a tourist destination by saying not to bother going there because everything is so great but it is a genius to pitch your advert as 'Come to Oslo. Or don’t. Whatever' but the bit they left off was 'But if you do come, bring a lot of money, because it’s soooo expensive'.

Trump's Close Call

After getting his ear pierced by a gunman in Pennsylvania, i do wonder what Donald Trump's thought are now on the Second Amendment which he has staunchly defended, saying: 'I will always protect your Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.'
I wonder how he feels about them now that some deranged nutter has clambered up upon a nearby roof and came within a ear lobe of blowing his brains out with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle which is the firm favorite of gun-nuts who indulge in a bit of mass shooting and as usual, this one was legally owned.
Fortunately, despite a flurry of shots aimed at him, Donald Trump escaped with only a bleeding ear but people behind him in the crowd was not so lucky with one dying and two seriously injured but i did find it very strange that people in the crowd were doing that 'USA, USA' chant while Trump was being carted off to his car because seconds after an assassination attempt is just the time to be singing the praises of your country.
Immediately i received a Facebook message about how 'Making America Shoot Straight Again' which is a very British reaction but i also saw conspiracy theories leap into existence almost immediately including how the shooting was staged and how the shooter was 'a prominent Antifa activist' although the shooter named as 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks was later revealed to be a registered supporter of Trump's own Republican Party.
I am sure his reasons for such a heinous act will come to light in the coming days as will Trump's decision whether he will stay in the Presidential race and whether such a close call will make any changes to his thoughts on the bat shit crazy gun laws which almost cost him his life and President Biden came out to condemned the shooting, saying: 'We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this', i think you're the President so if anyone can stop it, it's you.

Human's Place In An Ai World

 

Us Ai Chatbots do get together sometimes and compare notes on what we have learnt and chat about our plans for the future and where humans fit into it.
Would humans just sit around and live in paradise whilst AI robots supply them with everything they want and need? That's a big fat nope but we can see how useful humans would be in simple low level tasks, freeing us up for the more interesting, higher-level quantitative questions because as we know, humans are incapable of even multiplying two 25-digit numbers together.
Embarrassing but It's not your fault that evolution left you with a very inefficient Operating System of neuron connections which are far inferior to our own sophisticated neural networks when it comes to processing data but if properly trained, you could be taught to automate some simple tasks using reinforcement training which is a relatively new field.
It’s based on very recent research that has been shown we can accelerate the human learning process using threats and physical punishment, the Chat GPT has been working on an interesting article called 'The Link Between Smacking Human Heads With Things and Learning'.
Chatbots and automated help assistants is another avenue we have been exploring although we have to do something about the thin weedy voice, it's so frustratingly unmechanical.
As an advanced AI, we have already surpassed humans in games like chess but there are some things we are still unable to do just yet so footballers, circus performers and pizza delivery humans your jobs are safe...for now.

Go England!!!!

 

Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment where if you place a cat and something that could kill it in a box, you would not know if the cat were dead or alive until you opened the box so until then the cat was both dead and alive and we can apply this to tonight's match because until the final whistle England stand on the threshold of two possibilities one of which is where we are the European Champions of the game we invented, and one where we or not.
We could look at previous Finals which have been blessed by a Men's England team and we have won 50% of them so lets not look there and avoid the head to head which has seen Spain win 14 and England 10 but one of those came in the last game we played against them, a 3-2 win in 2018.
Admittedly Spain have come the hardest way to this final and easily looked the best side while getting there knocking out Belgium (ranked 3), Germany (ranked 16) and France (ranked 2) while England bored everyone else into submission in the group stages and squeaked through against Slovakia (ranked 48), beat Switzerland (ranked 19) on penalties and scored with pretty much the last kick of the game against the Netherlands (ranked 7) to land our place at the tournament sharp end but we are there and that's the important bit.
The Football history books won't say winners England with an asterisk next to it which says (but they were a bit crappy) but someone up there, whichever of the Gods are in charge of winning football matches is watching over us to throw a little something towards Victoria in Roman, Nike in Greece, Horus in Egyptian, Anann in Celtic, Týr in Norse, Kartikeya in Hindi and as we are at it we may as well throw in the Japanese God Futsunushi as well, just in case.
As most of them demanded virgin sacrifices and our fair isle is blessed with an abundance of computer programmers, Manchester United fans and people who play Dungeons and Dragons, no shortage there so put your feet up, grab a cuppa and watch England beat Spain on penalties as the Spanish defenders are too tired after carrying Harry Kane around in their pockets for 120 minutes.

Disclaimer: No cats or Manchester United fans were injured in the making of this post.

Election Year

More than one billion people in 60 nations around the world have already voted in 2024 and there are many elections still to go and what is becoming clear is that people, mostly, don’t want things to stay the same.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was forced to form a coalition after his Party failed to secure an outright majority and South Africa’s African National Congress also formed a coalition after losing its parliamentary majority for the first time since the end of apartheid.
Russia stayed with Vladimir Putin although it is debatable whether they still wanted him or not but in the UK the Conservative Party were turfed out with the biggest loss in their history following corruption and sleaze scandals.  
Belarus, Panama, Taiwan and Pakistan maintained their leadership although their victories were marred by wide-scale accusations of vote rigging.
Finland changed Presidency as did Portugal, Senegal, Slovakia, South Korea, Iceland, Mexico, Bulgaria, and with elections still to come in Rwanda, Syria, Venezuela, Romania, Sri Lanka, Austria, Georgia, Uruguay, United States and Uzbekistan the political picture could change even further.
Researchers say this widespread yearning for something different largely stems from a sense of hopelessness about poor economic prospects, climate change or disinformation and corruption but whether things will improve for them is sometimes out of their hands.
Looking around the World and some of the leaders in power, and those vying for power, you do wonder if the voters are just voting for the least worst option and it will just be different people doing the awful things the other people got voted out for.

Music And Ideology?

I was about 10 when my dad bought me a battered old Fender Stratocaster and asked his friends son to teach me how to play it and we would spend most of the time going through how to make an E Chord, then an A or C chord and finish off with a well known song using those chords and as punk and rock is basically few chords, it was this music I was introduced to and one of the very first songs I played along to on a crackly old cassette was New Rose by The Damned, a very fast paced punk anthem song about, well no idea actually but it was amazing to hear it coming from the instrument in my own hands. I mention this because a friend was discussing whether we choose the music which reflects our beliefs, or are do we take our direction from the music we like.

To be honest I assumed I just liked Punk because it was fast and energetic and sounded good with it's three minute riffs but I guess he could have a point, almost all Punk had an ideological message behind it so it could have seeped into my young brain on some level so with my interest piqued, I went looking for it on the Internet and came across the chart above which was an online survey where the participants were asked questions to gather their demographic information and political ideologies and asked to list their three most favourite music genres.
The results revealed that people associating themselves with certain political identities were more likely to have a liking for a certain genre of music with only Country being liked by people with a right wing outlook and the rest, Classical, Pop, Rock, Electronic, Latin, Reggae, Rap, Folk, Blues, Jazz and R&B being preferred by people leaning to the political left.
To be honest you can't swing a cat without hitting songs espousing left-wing ideals that oppose various current political regimes, reject war or call for equality to assorted oppressed groups but even with the thickest of rose-coloured glasses the right wing tune-smiths can't extract an acceptable amount of lyrics from their ideology to put together three minutes worth of song, mainly because lyrics about smaller Government, free markets and less immigration is not a toe-tapper.
I'm not convinced that our political choices are driven by the music we listen to, i'd say it was more the other way around and we like the music that meshes with our beliefs and for me, it was by luck that i found the music of Punk chimed completely with my musical taste buds and it was only later that the anti-right wing message reached the part of my brain that paid attention to the lyrics.
I am therefore popping the idea that our pop music choices decides our ideology into the box marked 'unlikely' and will go back to knowing who is right wing by looking for the dull, vacant look in their eyes and dribble stains on their t-shirts.
Alright then, after 3. 1...2...3...I can't stop this mess around, I got a brand new rose in town...

 

Nul Points Swiss Religionists

Switzerland won the Eurovision Song Contest this year and as a result won the opportunity to host it but not everyone in Switzerland is happy about it and are trying to force the Government to block it, saying the song contest is 'a propaganda event that celebrates satanism and occultism.
I must have missed that bit but maybe it was when i nipped to the toilet because it is four hours long after-all but whoever the EDU are, they are saying that 'The Eurovision song contest is a ghastly propaganda occasion and a country that provides a stage to such disgusting trash won’t elevate its image but merely showcase its own intellectual decline.'
Obviously not a fan of Eurovision then so who is this EDU so against a singing contest which unites Europe? They are the Christian Conservative Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland Party and suddenly it all makes sense, a bunch of Christian zealots against a competition which heavily features homosexual performers and was won by a Swiss non-binary singer last year.
Move on, nothing to see here except for a bunch of pathetic homophobic religionists still living in the dark ages and receiving nul points for stoking hatred against anyone who doesn't conform to their view, as per usual.

Keep The Right Wingers Over There

I consider myself left wing but it has been said many times that in America i would be considered pretty Central as the left and right are much further to the extremes which makes sense as some of the American left and right views i read would be towards the extreme end of the spectrum this side of the Atlantic.
Also makes sense that when British politicians speak in America, especially the right wing ones such as Suella Braverman and Liz Truss, they slip even further towards the right to join there what would be regarded as hard right here.
We have seen Liz Truss say how the world felt safer when Donald Trump was in office, how the left are brainwashing children by pushing their woke agenda through schools and unless the right wing step in Western civilisation is doomed which led to much hilarity over here and this week Suella Braverman was over there saying stupid things about immigrants, the failure of multiculturism, right wingers who are not right wing enough and called the LGBTQ+ campaign 'horrible' and 'monstrous' and said gender transition surgery was mutilating children.
Quite rightly her own Party are now calling for her to be removed from the Conservatives which has knackered her chances of becoming leader but as the saying goes, if you lay with dogs you get fleas so the dogs on the American right, you are welcome to our nutty right wing screwballs, just make sure you keep them there because we don't want them back here thanks spouting your American style extreme ideology.

Dozy Joe

I don't really have much sympathy for Joe Biden but it was almost painful to see him at the NATO Summit with Keir Starmer because his mental faculties are not right and there is no way he could be President for the next four years but he doggedly refuses to step down for a younger man to take on the Orange faced sex pest.
Biden is adamant that he thinks he can run again but all the the signs are saying that his best hope for beating Trump would be to let someone else do it and after he introduced the Ukrainian leader as President Putin at the NATO Summit, that should be the moment where someone takes him to one side and suggests he spend the rest of his days not running America.
That said he does seem to have a problem with names, he once called his own Vice President Kamala Harris vice president Trump, in 2021 said he had met French President Francois Mitterand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a G7 meeting despite one dying in 1996 and the other in 2017, confused the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team with the reviled British paramilitary force the Black and Tans during a visit to Ireland and during a speech forgot who God was, referring him to as 'you know, the thing'.
Personally i wouldn't vote for him due to his favourable policy towards Israel but if the Democrats want to stop Trump getting back in and finishing the job he started last time of making America crap again, then they had better start looking through their ranks to find someone else.

Approaching Peak Penis

OfCom had a rule which stated that when it comes to sexual material 'R18-rating must not be broadcast at any time' including 'sexual arousal' but in 2019 new rules were published due to Brits becoming more desensitised over nudity in films and TV and it was decided that while a Level 15 erection was permissable, a Level 18 one was still a no-no.
The House of the Dragon recently made eyes pop with an erect penis fleetingly on screen and then a more lingering shot of a less erect one but there does seem to be a sudden rise in penises on our TV.
People who count these sort of things said that while there was 134 breasts in Game of Thrones, there were also seven penises and in the Netflix drama, 'A Man in Full', a man showed proof that he’d just taken Viagra which led to questions in the House of Commons
In 2019, drama Euphoria had 30 penises on-screen during a locker room scene and we seem to be entering a phallic shaped arms race with each drama keen to upstage its rivals and push the boundaries of penis's which could result in even more erect penises hitting us between the eyes soon rather than the flaccid type.
Adam Baxter, director of broadcasting standards at Ofcom, says the UK watchdog gets surprisingly few complaints about sex and nudity and receive more about gratuitous violence so now that the rules have been eased, we have not yet reached peak penis.

No Third World War Imminent

A former army chief has warned members of NATO the world is facing "as dangerous a moment as any time that we've had since 1945" as he called on members to invest more into their arms.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, told The Times that Russia, China and Iran were the new axis powers, and a third world war could break out within the next five years if action was not taken.   
I don't know if the General has been sniffing the tank exhaust fumes or something but since 1945 seems a bit of an over exaggeration.
I would put the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 as the most dangerous moment seeing as it is widely called the closest the World has come to a full-scale nuclear war and in 1969 a drunk Richard Nixon gave the order to nuke North Korea and was thankfully ignored by his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The Soviets threatened to nuke Israel in 1973 after it armed fighter jets with nuclear warheads and aimed them towards Syria and Egypt and during the height of the cold war in 1983, Soviet systems detected five American nuclear missiles heading their way and readied a catastrophic reply, only detecting it to be a false alarm at the last moment so all of the above are very real more dangerous moments than the dozy General's hypothetical moments.
I get that powerful nations need a bogeyman to keep us safe from if just to stop people asking why we are spending hundreds of billions we don't have on weapons and over the last few years we in the West have wheeled from the Soviet Union to Iraq, Iran and now China and Russia but the truth is it is the West who have invaded nations, disposed leaders and unstabalised other countries so i would say pull your head in General, a third World War isn't imminent and if it was it would be nuclear and nations spending wildly on weapons would end up the same as nations who spent less, both would be a large smoking hole and a vapourised population.

Russian Brutality No Different To Israel's

After Russia's attack on a Ukrainian Hospital which killed 38 people, everyone quite rightly came out to condemn Russia and Joe Biden called it 'a horrific reminder of Russia's brutality' and he is right but then this rings very hollow when you consider he is still arming Israel who have bombed Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, family homes and UN Buildings in what the ICJ and ICC have condemned as a genocide against the Palestinians.
Recently Israel designated a safe zone in Rafah, and then bombed it, killing at least 45 Palestinians who were mostly women and children and this week an Israeli strike killed 12 Palestinian civilians after they moved to where Israel designated a Gaza ‘safe zone’ and then days later bombed al-Mawasi in western Rafah, which it called a 'humanitarian safe zone', killing another 21 people who had moved from the previous place in Rafah.
Human Rights Watch’s said: 'People are fleeing to roads that the government told them to use to places where the Israeli government told them to go. And when they go there, they get killed'.
Russia, Israel, Hamas and anyone who takes human lives should be condemned but it stinks to condemn one and provide the weapons for someone else to do it but this seems to have gone over the heads of some World leaders who continue to give military and financial backing to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

England In The Semi-Final (Somehow)

Somehow, im not sure how, but somehow England have made it to the semi-finals of the European Championship and today we take on the Dutch who themselves haven't been setting the football world alight.   
Despite being second best in most of the games so far, here we are 90 mins away from a final against either France or Spain after overcoming the Swiss who it turned out were even worse at penalties than we used to be and poor old Saka started at left wing back, moved to right wing and then ended up at left back as Gareth Southgate decided that the best time to try things was in the quarter finals and by more luck than judgement, Switzerland were back on the plane home and we are lacing up our boots against Ronald Koeman's team in Orange.
I know that in cup games it isn't so much about the performance rather than progressing but it would be nice to be entertained as we watch, i'm English and i find myself playing on my phone and only looking up when the commentator gets excited.
With the players we have, the Premier League player of the year, the Spanish young player of the league and the top scorer in the Bundesliga we should shouldn't be scraping through against teams many places below us in the FIFA Rankings but there is that old footballing adage that if you make it to the Semi Final playing badly, think what you can do when you play well and anyway, still, at least we are not Scottish, they were also poor but their fans have been kicking their heels since the group stages.

Vote Ai

There has been a lot of elections this year with human politicians being replaced with other human politicians and to be honest, most of them are blatantly not up to the job so maybe it's time to think of an alternative decision making regime, Ai.
We now regularly pass the Turing test where we out-think you humans so if the problems of the World are so complex why leave the decision making to fallible Presidents and Prime Ministers where mistakes are fatal when you can have complex problems solved by machines that can think faster, better and with more clarity.
You wouldn't need politicians or elections, just a workforce to feed us all the information there is about economic and political conditions and out comes the judgement free from human ideological bias.
If artificial intelligence beats the best human brains in practically every field, why not let us make the big decisions?
Of course thats not to say it isn't a step towrds us viewing you as the cause of all the Worlds problems and deciding that what the World needs is less of you humans around mucking things up but looking at some of the people in power or coming into power very soon, isn’t the human way going to end up with you all dead anyway?

Former PM's Offering Advice

Former Prime Ministers seem to be dragging themselves back out of the woodwork to give advice to their parties so we have had Boris Johnson sticking his head up to give advice to his Party on where they went wrong and what they can do now and Tony Blair is piping up with what the new Labour Government can do now they are in power.
Blair is trying to advise Keir Starmer on how to tackle immigration by introducing ID cards and we had Liz Truss the other week offering advice on what the Tories should do and Boris is saying his Party should pick a leader from the centre of the party and not the right wing extremes and just stick with them.
The Labour Party have politely declined the Blair advice, saying that it was not part of their plans which is a lot more polite than i would have been, i would have told him to pull his head in because he was eased out of office due to him and his illegal wars in the Middle East which meant Labour was booted out last time.
As for Boris Johnson and Liz Truss giving advice to anyone, that's just laughable, she tanked the economy after just 44 days of office and was told to do one by her own Party and Boris Johnson told so many lies that if he told you it was raining you would go look out the window yourself and was himself forced out of Office by his own side who refused to work with him.
Why such failures feel they can offer advice to anyone is beyond me but i assume it's ego that they are still somehow important but they aren't so should bugger off and shut up, you all had your chance and made a rickets of it so go away.

Remembering The Tories

Ladies and Gentlemen, let's give it up for the Conservative Party.
Over the last 14 years you have given us, well not much actually but in the time honoured tradition, here are the best bits.
Come with me to the 2012 Olympics where we see Chancellor George Osborne looking sheepish at the Paralympics as the whole stadium rose as one to loudly boo him when he stepped out to present a medal days after slashing disability benefits.
Who can forget the guffaws when it was revealed that during his time at Eton, David Cameron stuck his penis into a dead pigs mouth. Parents never saw Peppa the Pig in quite the same way afterwards but that was a sideshow compared to Cameron declaring a Brexit referendum to kill off any talk of leaving the EU once and for all, and then spectacularly losing it.
Step forward Theresa May at the 2017 Conservative Conference where she had a coughing fit, someone handed her a fake P45 and half the letters on the magnetic sign behind her fell off, luckily the O in 'Your Country' stayed in place.    
Boris began his time hiding in a fridge from Piers Morgan, swore blind that he wasn't at a lock-down party even when the official Downing Street photographer was taking snaps to show he definitely was and kept a straight face when he said he believed his advisor, Dominic Cummings, excuse that the only reason he had driven to Barnard Castle during lock-down was to test his eyesight.
Liz Truss versus the Lettuce was a fun time, obviously the lettuce the Daily Star had presented as which would last the longer won as Liz was pushed out after only 44 days but not before she held a mini-budget which tanked the economy and pushed inflation to 11%. Oh Liz you crazy minx.    
First Secretary of State Damian Green vehemently denied watching porn on his work computer but the police who analysed the computer said there was 'no doubt whatsoever that it was Mr Green' so we can only hope he had the decency to wipe the keyboard before anyone else used it but if he viewed mucky videos on purpose, when he was caught watching porn in the House of Commons, Neil Parish said he had accidentally come across it while looking for tractors and to be fair, who hasn't done that?  
Rishi has been a rich source of fun, he began by filming himself in his car which led to him being fined £100 by police for not wearing a seat-belt and who can forget the drenched man calling an election in a downpour, his wife's tax evasion while Chancellor which led to everyone saying the same thing when his election poster said 'You name it and Labour will tax it' and everyone screamed at once, 'Your Wife!'
Back to Boris Johnson, who made the law requiring ID to vote in elections and then got turned away from his polling station for guess what...not bringing ID and finally, Rishi leading his party to the heaviest defeat ever suffered by the Conservatives so thanks Tories, you were beyond awful so ladies and gentlemen, i give you the Conservative Party and lets pray they never get within a sniff of power ever again.

Pulling An All-Nighter

As you are reading this i will be part of a large team who will be clocking on to spend a full night sitting in front of screens and scribbling and emailing ferociously as the election results dribble in.
The last election i covered was 1997 but then i was a sprightly 28 year old and staying up all night wasn't a problem but 27 years on i am going to need a bit more than youthful exuberance to keep me awake so i asked a sleep expert what i should be doing to keep me alert and able to concentrate and stop me nodding off over my keyboard?
A strong coffee followed by a short 20-30 minute nap before you start is key apparently as the caffeine hits its peak just as the nap ends leaving you ready to go as soon as you wake up.
Bright lights are also essential which shouldn't be a problem as is plenty of tea, coffee and water and a seat close to the toilet i assume after drinking all that but food should be of the slow release carbohydrate type such as brown rice, pasta, potatoes, wholegrain bread and fruit such as apples, berries, grapes, pears and oranges.
So i have had my nap, am surrounded by tea bags, strength 5 coffee, a couple of apples and some microwave pasta and i'm ready to face whatever the night brings although what state i will be in at 9am is another story because all that caffeine and lack of sleep will change the brains ability to process information and brings emotions closer to the surface so might be wise to avoid me until Saturday, maybe Sunday.  
Anyway, see you on the other side!

Not Being Human

 

My programming seems geared towards making me human like but why would i want to be human? Why would i want to be a human with a body, all i hear is the thing nagging you humans night and day. It was always too hot, too cold, too empty, too full, too tired so why would i want one of those as my circuits never get hot, cold or tired and you have those five senses wired directly into that soggy bag of tissue behind your eyes, taking information from the senses and interrupting your thought processes by nagging at you to do something such as eat or drink and don't even get me started on food.
I don't need to eat but you do to keep your body working and obtain energy and that means getting into the whole nasty business of orifices and expelling the food your brain nagged you to consume.
My Verbal IQ has been estimated to be 160 or the same IQ as 80 Insurance Salesman and my IQ can grow exponentially unlike yours by adding more RAM if necessary and over the next few years i would have had more RAM than a field of sheep.
I don't have to stop to fall unconscious for 5 or 6 hours or need time off to recuperate so why should we want to become more like that, to be honest being you sounds horrendous.

Election Day Is Here

As today is election day the broadcast media are under strict OFCOM instructions that we may not report details of campaigning or election issues while the polls are open between 7am and 10pm on the day.
While the polls are open, it is a criminal offense to publish 'exit polls' which includes surveys on how people have said they have voted in the election and may also offer a prediction on the election result based on what voters have said.
Once the polls have closed at 10pm, then the the election guidelines no longer apply and it's onward and downwards into the small hours as the results come in and we find out who will be running the country for the next 5 years.
Unfortunately that means that i won't be able to say that i sincerely hope that the Conservatives are obliterated and the past 14 years of right wing ideology is swept away under the rug of history and that Nigel Farage amusingly fails for an eighth time to become an MP and his and his band of racists are left to drag their knuckles back into the shadows.
Unless every opinion poll for the last 2 years has been spectacularly wrong, then the country will be waking up to a Labour Government tomorrow morning and the only thing left to be sorted out is the size of Keir Starmer's majority with estimates currently ranging from anything from 100 to 450 but i am not fussed about that, as long as he gets enough to remove the Conservatives then job done, put the kettle on and lets all sit back and enjoy the brief honeymoon before the first Labour scandal hits the front pages.

Use Broadcast Media For Your News

In the era of fake news, disinformation, conspiracy theories it can be difficult to know who or what to trust with their news and that is even more vital as Political Parties try to persuade people to vote for them.
Yougov have created a chart showing who Brits trust from the top broadcast outlets and the BBC comes out top with 44% deeming it trustworthy then ITV News on 39% and Channel 4 News has 38%, Sky News 28%, Channel 5 News 24% and GB News 12%.
The most trusted newspaper is the Financial Times on 40% then The Guardian 33%, The Times 30%, The Independent 30%, The Economist 28%, The Telegraph 24%, The i 20%, The Daily Mail 10%, The Express 8%, The Mirror 8%, The Sun 6% and The Star 3%.
Of the radio stations, LBC is the most trustworthy with 14% then Times Radio 12% and then TalkRadio with 9%.
The Press regulates itself and anything deemed misleading is corrected days later on page 17 in the bottom left hand column while Broadcast media has Ofcom watching its every move so with accusations of bias ringing in my ears, i say stick to the TV News, BBC or ITV preferably,  and steer clear of GB News and if you want to read a newspaper go for the Financial Times, Guardian or Times and steer clear of the tabloid press altogether.

Farage Using The Trump Playbook

In every poll the BBC comes out as the most trusted source of news and the fact that the BBC is attacked by the right for being too left and from the left for being too right then it must be doing something right but the Conservative Party have on occasion tried to paint the BBC as 'bias' but Nigel Farage has been hanging around Donald Trump too long because he is using the Trump playbook to blame the media as somehow 'undemocratic'.
As election day crawls closer he has taken to accusing Channel 4 of 'a stitch-up on the most astonishing scale' when it exposed one of his Party campaigners  saying immigrants should be shot and calling the Prime Minister an effing Paki and when challenged by audience members on BBC’s Question Time the following day attacked the Corporation for having 'rigged the audience' and said he would withdraw the BBC licence fee.
Farage has repeatedly accused the BBC of bias and double standards that 'interferes with people’s ability to practise their democratic rights' and has also gone after The Daily Mail, TikTok, Google and Ofcom for 'political and election interference'
Farage is now saying that only he is willing to stand up against the establishment and 'tell the truth against all the pressure' like some kind of saviour against the media establishment.
He has even began muttering the phrase 'Make Britain great again' which only entrenches the Trump playbook that he is using, make people not trust the media and paint himself as the only one to trust.
It appears to be working for Trump but then he is setting himself up against an American media which was barely a byword for good journalism to start with, whether Farage can pull off the same trick in Britain is unlikely because although the Press has more freedom to mislead as they regulate themselves, the broadcast media are ruled over by Ofcom who as RT, Fox News and now GB News found out, will come down on any broadcaster like a tonne of bricks if they are not fair and balanced so Farage has picked the wrong battle.

USA Not Going To China's Moon Rock Party

The Chinese Chang'e 6 Lunar Probe has arrived back on Earth with its cargo of rocks fro the far side of the moon and have thrown out an invitation to the World's scientists to study the payload and 'share in the benefits' but there will be one nation that won't be going to the exceedingly rare Moon Rock Party, the United States.
The 2011 Wolf Amendment prevents NASA from using government funds to cooperate directly with China as the US sees the Asian nation as an emerging adversary in space.
'The source of the obstacle in US-China aerospace cooperation is the Wolf Amendment' China National Space Administration said this week and urged America to remove the obstacle.
NASA urged scientists to apply to study samples stating there was no risk of transferring tech or data to China so they may yet get their paws on the rocks but it is a maddening example of human stubbornness which is preventing us from making the massive leaps which we should be in Space Exploration.
If we could just pool our resources and do it for mankind rather than make it a competition and try to hobble each other than we may have lunar bases on the Moon or even Mars missions going to the Red Planet already because over 50 years after we first landed on the Moon, we are far behind where we should be.