The Word Of God You Say?

More than eight hundred times the Bible uses the phrase: 'The LORD says …' so we are on pretty safe ground to assume that the believers consider the book to be the word of God but a quick look at the timeline shows that it is more the word of whoever decided it was the word of God.
The early Christians were actually a offshoot of the Jewish faith but as their movement gained followers, they thought that they could 'break away' and form their own separate religion and began making changes from the Jewish text to differentiate themselves and began circulating stories about Jesus, many of which were borrowed from other religions at the time by enthusiastic followers but nothing was written down until around 150ad when Marcion of Sinope puts in an appearance.
He set about gathering together all the stories going around about Jesus and his gang and chose the stories he liked and rejected or edited the ones which he never and put them all together to create the first Bible, or Testament.
By the 2nd Century, the Christian Church was beginning to get itself in order and wasn't keen on all the stories Marcion chose which were mostly of a 'Feel God's wrath' type so decided to keep most of them but create a 'New Testament' which showed their Gods more cuddly side and set about picking which stories to include in its new edition.
The Bishop of Antioch, Serapion, was pivotal in choosing what went into the New Testament and after weeding out texts that did not align with his idea of the newfound concepts of God, they settled on four anonymous texts to which were assigned the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and edited them to fit their new peaceful and loving God.
By the 3rd Century, Clement of Alexandria thought their Holy book was looking a bit thin so added a few more Gospels and Tertullian and Origen chipped in a few more .
By the 4th Century, the New Testament was coming together but there was disagreements over whether the Book of Revelations should be included with its prophesy of Apocalypse and all manner of things the bishop of Alexandria, Dionysus, called 'barbarous'  but was finally included by the synods of Hippo and Carthage at the end of the Century where it was decided that this with its 27 Books was now the final edit and nobody may add or take away from it.
They also threw in the decision that anyone owning anything else was 'heretical' and would be arrested but some versions still omitted some stories and put in their own until 692ad when the Holy Sees of Constantinople and Antioch told them to fall into line and by the way OUR version is the only one you can use.
In the 16th century, Martin Luther  tried to get some chapters removed as they had 'nothing of the nature of the Gospel about them' but the Catholic Church at the The Ecumenical Council of Trent in 1546 stamped all over the idea saying the 27 books in the New testament were going to stay and anyone who doesn't like it could always be excommunicated.
Not bad then for a book which started out as a collection of made up stories about other Gods and other deities with their own Christian God copied and pasted in as a replacement and then heavily edited to show him in the best possible light but no so much the Word of God, more the Word of whoever had editing privileges that particular day.

Hey Donald, Leave Our Songs Alone

I remember Donald Trump being told to get his chubby little hands off songs by several musicians when he ran for President in 2016 and he has the same problem again this year with an array of musicians coming out and demanding he stop playing their songs at his rally's.
Abba have now joined Celine Dion, Beyonce, Phil Collins and the family of Isaac Hayes and Sinead O'Connor in telling Trump to not play their songs but the most unfortunate is the Smiths because they had a song titled 'Your The One For Me Fatty' which would have been prefect for the crowd to sing as he waddled onto the stage but alas, not anymore.    
Last time out the musicians included Adele, Neil Young, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Guns N' Roses, Luciano Pavarotti, Nickelback, Ozzy Osbourne, Prince, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and The White Stripes and even the Village people told him to stop using their songs in his bid for the White House, Michael Stipe of REM went with: 'Go f*** yourselves you sad, attention-grabbing, power-hungry little men. Do not use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign' which certainly put across his objection.
The right wing has always been short on musical talent, the left, like the devil, always had the best tunes so it shouldn't be any surprise that the Trump campaign is only attracting singers who are wearing boots and a cowboy hat but in America songs from 1928 and before are now out of Copyright and can be used so maybe he should take a look at the choices but i think i found the perfect one for him.
A 1890 song by LM Luse called Orange, i would go with that one.

Not Looking Back in Anger

I was not that much of an Oasis fan even at their height, i preferred Pulp out of the small group of Britpop bands at the time but the Oasis songs were okay (Don't Look Back in Anger , The Importance of Being Idle, Wonderwall ) but the brothers were a couple of morons and that doesn't seemed to have changed much in the intervening years and after years of between Liam and Noel Gallagher has ended with the inevitable: Oasis on a Noels 'Pay-A-£20m-Divorce Settlement Tour'.
Usually i try my hardest to separate the total douchebags from their music but i have a real problem with the Gallagher brothers and mainly because i don't think they were good enough for their music to outweigh their big fat stupid gobs.
They were pretty popular at the time amongst the 'lads', with Blur and Pulp aiming towards the more intelligent end of the Britpop market and Oasis going for the beer swilling yobs type which is another reason i'm not overly keen, that sort of behaviour was moronic at the time and now the fans will be middle aged and it is an even worse look but each to their own, i imagine their are bands and music i like they don't so that's fair.
Easy to say then that i won't be spending £75 to go watch them in concert but there does seem to be a  dearth of British bands around now so i can honestly say they are the biggest band in the UK at the moment and good luck to them.  

2024 Paralympics

I'm going to miss most of the Paralympics in Paris this year as more than 4,000 athletes representing more than 150 nations compete across 22 sports and participating will be a Refugee team.
Russia and Belarus are banned although you will still find a couple dozen Russian and Belarusian athletes competing as neutral athletes and if they win any medals then the song that plays will be an instrumental anthem written for the Games.
Athletes who can’t compete for their own country due to political reasons may participate as part of the Refugee Olympic Team which contains 36 athletes representing 'the world’s displaced population' and include participants from Iran, South Sudan, Syria, Ethiopia and Cuba.
A question i asked at the Olympics was if a member of the Refugee team win gold then what anthem will they have the (i assume) Olympic flag raised to and apparently it would be the Olympic Hymn which i didn't even know existed until about 10 minutes ago.
Anyway, i have the same bet with my Australian colleague regarding who will finish higher up the league table and we can assume China will top it as they ended the last one with more than double the British tally in second place but i am confident that i will be winning back the money i lost when Australia finished above us at the Olympics.

Answering The Hermit Priest

 
In 2004, Johannes Schwarz became a Priest in Lichtenstein and in 2014 he found a small hut in the Alps and gave up all the trappings of 21st Century life and stayed there and remains there today 'raising his mind to God'.
Living as hermit and feeding himself with the vegetables he grows in the small garden outside his hut, he has spent 8 years meditating on those timeless questions, 'What is the meaning of life' and 'what is our purpose here on Earth'.
Now i can help him here but as an atheist i will therefore not be going down the flowery God route but the meaning of life is to go from the cradle to the grave being the best possible person that you can be, to do the best you can for yourself and others and when your life ends, knowing that during your allotted time on the Earth you made other peoples lives better for you being in them.  
As for our purpose, we are merely animals amongst many on the planet such as dogs and cats (albeit more intelligent) and their purpose is the same as ours, to keep our species going by having children and caring and nurturing them to adulthood where they can continue the circle of life.
There you go then Johannes, both explained and i didn't need to climb a mountain and ask the Universe for the questions so wave goodbye to your cucumber and marrows and come back to Civilisation
because i am no biologist but living alone thousands of feet up the side of a mountain isn't going to help with keeping the human race going.

Kamala Outside America

Where before the American President Joe Biden stepped backward and Kamala Harris stepped forward, America seemed to be heading towards a disastrous second term for Donald Trump but things seemed to have turned around and  polls have the Democrats in the lead.
The White House staff must be sighing with relief because of the bill to reinforce the chairs for Trump's ample frame would have cost a fortune but  most Americans should be also because a man who was found guilty for Sexual Assault and is a convicted Fraudster while leading his campaign with how he would be dictator on Day 1 doesn't suggest he would be a good choice for leader.    
What the next President does in America is no concern of ours and as for Kamala, i neither know nor care much about her apart from she smiles and laughs a lot which isn't a bad trait to have but being American President does come with some responsibility outside of the countries borders so where does she stand on issues which would affect the rest of us?
As the second largest Global polluter and with Climate Change really starting to put the bite on the Planet, America releases 6bn tons of CO2 annually (China is top with 14bn tons) so it is great that Ms Harris has long advocated for tough laws to protect the environment and while a prosecutor in California, sued oil companies for environmental damage.
She also called fracking to be banned and to funnel funds towards renewable energy and electric vehicle tax credit and rebate programs so we hopefully will get a Green President serious about mitigating the worst effects of Climate Change
She is a supporter of Nato and supporting Ukraine in it's war against Russia and appears to be a lot less on friendly terms with the Israeli genocide currently going on in Palestine, being an advocate for a two-state solution and calling for an end to the war in Gaza which she said was: 'a humanitarian catastrophe for Palestinians'.
While serving as vice-president, she has been more open to criticising Israel during the Israel-Gaza war than her boss and held what she called: 'frank and constructive talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu' when he visited Washington in July which is diplomatic parlance for telling him to stop being such a murderous dick.
As for the rest, as i said it doesn't concern us and she can do what she wants with their bat-shit crazy gun laws, immigration, tax rates and the such because i'm over 3,500 miles away so fill your boots there Kamala but in the things that does affect me, she seems ok so i know who i'm rooting for, and it isn't the obese orange faced sex offender.

Wasn't Me

I thought that the New Government would get around a year to blame any problems on the last Government and when the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, came out almost immediately and said that the economy she had inherited from the Conservatives was worse than she imagined and there was a £22bn shortfall it was expected.
That she then published the Official figures from the Office of Budget Responsibility to show that the UK bought in £327bn in taxes but spent £406bn to back up her 'It wasn't me, it was them' mantra then it  
drove home that we may well be facing a pretty grim budget on the horizon.
Having already made a manifesto pledge to not increase Income Tax, National Insurance or VAT then it is some of the other taxes we should be looking at for where the extra revenue will be coming from but
as it is either bring more in or pay less out, there are a few options.
The Conservatives went for the pay less out option and spent over a decade slashing and hacking at everything which worked as well as it sounded as almost every Government Department is now under-staffed and places like the NHS are seriously underfunded and waiting times are at the worst in NHS history.
Labour then seem to be looking at the bring more in option and Capital Gains tax seems to be the favourite as it was mentioned before the Election and the Conservatives tinkered with it to bring down the amount you can 'Gain' before paying tax but Labour are apparently looking at making the tax rate the same as the income tax rate.
Inheritance Tax and Pension Relief are also up for discussion which would effect 1.4% of the population in the case of the Inheritance Tax and anyone paying tax at a higher rate in the case of the Pension Relief which wouldn't necessarily scare to many people and would raise taxes but not for the vast majority.
I don't envy Rachel Reeves having to balance the books or how she will do it but it does seem quite prudent to front load the bad news when you can still blame the former Government when the memory of Liz Truss trashing the economy is fresh in the mind.   

UK and US No Longer The Good Guys

Within weeks of taking over as the new Government, the Labour Party  restored funding of UNRWA and dropping the previous governments’ plans to challenge the right of the International Criminal Court to seek an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over war crimes in a welcome move but they have yet to suspended arms sales to Israel.
Today, Foreign Office diplomat Mark Smith resigned in protest, warning that the country may be complicit in war crimes saying: 'There is no justification for the U.K.’s continued arms sales to Israel yet somehow it continues', and with 58% of the country  support ending arms sales to Israel and the British government receiving advice from its own lawyers that Israel was in breach of international humanitarian law in Gaza, the Government is on the wrong side of the argument.
The new Foreign Secretary will only commit to 'a comprehensive review to assess whether Israeli war crimes might have been committed in Gaza' but in a stark reminder of how long Israel have been pounding Palestine, the UK had suspended arms exports previously in 1982, 2009 and 2014 over concerns of war crimes although that the scale of the death and destruction in Gaza today where more than 40,000 people have been killed, dwarfs that of the circumstances that led to previous arms embargoes.
In the US at least a dozen officials have quit their posts in the last several months in protest of Washington’s policies on the war and  the Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris has faced growing calls for the U.S. to impose an arms embargo on Israel which would have a greater effect as the U.S. provides considerably more arms to Israel than the U.K. with just last week the Americans agreeing to send $20 billion of arms to Israel.
Why Israel has such a hold over nations when the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court are talking of an Israeli Genocide in Palestine and after over 6 decades of military oppression and it's leaders  facing arrest for War Crimes but after Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now backing a genocide, it will be quite some time before either country can have the nerve to say they are the good guys.

Ai Sex Bots

 

The growth of AI and robotics is not growing fast enough for some humans who welcome the advantages robots can bring to humans because they want to have sex with them.
Analysis of more than 200,000 chatbot conversations shows how the new tech is actually being used and a huge amount of AI chatbot use is sexual in nature, so much that programmers have created an AI companion app called Replika, which is fairly open-minded about responding to dirty talk.
There are currently companies selling adult, female sexbots, and they explain that they can help the type of people who's girlfriends usually come  with a footpump have safe sex and lessen exploitation and sex trafficking, decreasing instances of predatory behaviour and curb the spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
If the rise of the robots isn't scary enough for you, the creepy men most likely to use them for sex are asking for robots who look, and act, even more human-like because the pasty face brigade, the lonely, the miserable and men who wear Hawaiian shirts have given up trying to woo the female population with their knowledge of calculus and being able to recite the script from Star Wars and are preparing for a ready-built girlfriend.
There are fears that an entire class of humans may emerge who will not know how to interact with the opposite gender and may never have sex with other humans so very much like today's computer programmers come to think of it but i do wonder if the sex-bots will be self cleaning but it is best not to dwell on that thought too long.

What's In A Name?

A translation firm is offering prospective parents the chance to check their preferred baby-names don’t mean anything embarrassing in other languages and will check the meaning across 100 languages.
When it comes to picking a name for your new baby, so many factors come into play as you try to choose something unique, a family name or one that can be easily twisted into another funny or embarrassing word by foreigners writing a mickey taking blog post such as:

Amber means bucket in Estonia.
Becky in the Philippines is a young, gay man.
Bill is the Dutch word for buttocks
Bobby is pig in Indonesian.
Cara Is Arabic for shit.
Chloë means bollocks in Morocco and toilet in Germany
Dom is Dutch for stupid.
Fanny in the UK is a woman’s genitals.
Freya means ugly in Portuguese.
Gary in Japan is diarrhea .
Gil means snot in Poland.
Kai means egg in Thai.
Kiki means vagina in the Phillipines .
Lisa is the Greek word for rabies.
Loki means asshole in German.
Lou means a toilet in the UK
Mark is Norwegian for worm.
Mona in Italy is a woman’s genitals and a female mokey in Spanish.
Peter means to fart in French and fellatio in Argentina
Pippa in Italian means masturbation, sex in Swedish and blow job in Greece.
Randy in the UK means horny
Siri is penis in Georgia and bum in Japan.
Tessa Danish word for urinate.
Tod/Todd is German for death.
Willy in the UK is penis.

What Is Project 25?

 
I keep hearing about how Donald Trump is poised to enact the Project 2025 manifesto should America be mentally impaired enough to vote him into Office again but i have never really been very sure what it is about and Donald Trump himself has seemingly tried to distance himself from it , saying  he disagrees with some of the things they’re saying , calling them absolutely ridiculous and abysmal and then confusingly that he didn’t know anything about it or want to.
Project 2025 is a right wing think tanks manifesto which makes 'recommendations for the next conservative president' and they note that 64% of their recommendations from Project 2016 were implemented by, guess who...Donald Trump.
But what exactly does the 900 page document actually recommend 'the next conservative president' does when in office?
Well it starts by raging against Marxism in American institutions and wants to deconstruct the Administrative State by abolishing the Department for Education and Department of Homeland Security as well as scrapping the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and close the US Secret Service’s field offices.
Next they say they would 'restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children' and they plan to do that by deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights from every piece of legislation that exists.
The basis of sex in education programs to be amended to define ‘sex’ as meaning 'only biological sex recognised at birth' as 'radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on school-aged children today' and public education employees and contractors can only using a name for a student and use the pronoun which is on their birth certificate.
It also calls for the next President to disregard same-sex couples and subsidizing single-motherhood and create policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families and all regulations that outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity (including transgender identity) and sex characteristics should be rescinded.
As for abortion, they want Planned Parenthood to receive no Medicaid funds and outlaw mailed abortion pills and reverse government approval of chemical abortion drugs.
They next want to end 'Climate fanaticism' and end the war on fossil fuels and subsidies on electric vehicles and scrap carbon capture programs as environmental extremism is 'anti-human' and the number of climate-related bodies to be downsized or 'eliminated'.
It then wants to hold China accountable and collect damages for trillion of dollars for the Covid-19 virus, which it says was a 'genetically engineered virus' and eliminate visas being issued to Chinese students to prevent espionage and ban Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat.
On the military, it wants to increase military budgets and form a 'Space Force Academy' and reverse policies which allow transgender people to serve in the military.
They suggest aggressively building Trump’s border wall, stop funding the Palestinian Authority, strengthening relations with Saudi Arabia, a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of America’s involvement in all international organisations such as the World Health Organistaion who 'support the oppression of basic human rights'.
So all in all, Project 2025 is pretty crackpot and they would need a proper moron to even consider their recommendations and even Donald Trump isn't that stupid. Is he?

Stoic Advice For Gen Z

If you are aged between 12 and 27 then you are officially the unhappiest of all the age groups according to scientists at the Dartmouth University who have studied data from 43 countries and concluded that Gen Z are the least happy.
The current thinking was that happiness is U shaped with people most happy in their younger and older years and dipping in Middle Age but  the new research has suggested that young adults today are at their lowest happiness almost at the start of their life and face an uphill battle to achieve greater happiness as they age.
Researchers have pinned the change to around 2014 to 2017 when record numbers of young people, particularly young women, began seeking help from mental health services and researchers are not sure what particularly happened around that time and why it affected young women especially.
I have had a look through the year 2014 on Wikipedia and i think there may be a clue on February 28th when the number of people in the U.S. using mobile devices to access the internet overtook those using desktop computers and was followed globally two years later in 2016.
Whereas you actually had to have access to a computer previously and they were generally at school or in the living room of your family home, social media became easily accessible through something which was always to hand and could be accessed anywhere.
If we had social media on tap back when i was a teenager then one look at my Facebook page back then would have seen me shunned by polite society but luckily it wasn't and any teenage indiscretions are lost in the mists of time along with my bare-faced lying so we never had the pressures teenagers have today with their mood swings, obsessive crushes and social anxiety played out in front of the whole World on social media.
A staggering 49.5% of today's youngsters meet the diagnostic criteria for mental health disorders with 31.9% of them experiencing anxiety disorders and 22% exhibiting severe impairment or distress and at such a tender age you are not equipped to handle the vitriol and maliciousness which often comes over social media.
I say to the Gen Z-er's, as bad as things seem now, they will get better or at the very least you will be better equipped to handle them and follow the sage advice of the Stoic Marcus Aurelius who said: 'If you are distressed by anything, the pain is not due to the thing itself but your reaction to it and it is you who determine your reaction'. 

Ch-Ch-Changes

Human life has changed so much in modern times. If someone could parachute in from an earlier century it would be a whole new world and even more to the first Homo Sapiens from 315,000 years ago but outwardly, we don't seem to have evolved much from the hairless primates that were our forefathers.
You could be excused for thinking that humans have therefore stopped evolving but the outward appearance may not have changed much but inside their have been many changes with resistance to diseases and the Darwin 'survival of the fittest' and adapting to the environment.
Genetic studies suggest that humans are still evolving and we may not have grown fins or wings like some species, but over time evolution has blessed us with a better sense of smell, bigger brains and
a keener immune system which isn't as cool as wings i agree, but are still very useful things to have.
Another examples of recent human evolution are a recently acquired Lactose tolerance and over 70% of European or European-descended adults can drink milk whereas before intolerance was the natural state of things which must have been awful, black tea and dry cornflakes!
As for what evolution has in store for our future generations, the scientists predict we will likely live longer and become taller, as well as lose muscle and bone density and our jaws and teeth will shrink
and our brains will continue to get smaller but looking at some people around, that evolutionary process started quite a while back.

I ❤️️ Pyongyang

We are off to Scandinavia for our Holidays this year but when we are planning next years trip, North Korea could be on the list because the country is set to open its borders to tourists later this year.
It has been noted that just as Britain is doing its damnedest to kick out foreigners, the most Totalitarian country on the Planet is welcoming them which doesn't show us in a good light when Kim Jong Un is more foreigner friendly than the morons who tried to burn down Asylum hostels and waved 'foreigners out' banners here a few weeks ago but it wouldn't be worth explaining it to them, far too many syllables in totalitarianism for them to understand but to be honest too many in moron also.
Calling itself a 'Socialist Utopia', Tripadvisor is the best place to got to find out what the Asian nation has to offer tourists and read reviews which are all written by genuine travelers. Honestly, they really were.  

1. Demilitarized Zone: review - The tour guide was absolutely lovable and the posters were very informative. The store nearby that sells hand painted propaganda posters.

2. Tower of the Juche Idea: review - The view was pretty spectacular. Its about the only thing you have to queue for in the DPRK but it’s definitely worth the wait. The staff were very sweet too.

3. Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum: review - Here you will learn how the evil USA started the Korean War and was totally defeated by the valiant Korean people.

4. Concrete Wall: review - The military personnel here will allow photos with them at the appropriate time; they will say when. Do what your guides say and all will be OK!!!

5. Kim Il-sung Square: review I’m very impressed about this square. Huge square for ceremony and national parade.

6. Geumsusan Memorial Palace: review - Monument to a nation's founders. Dignified and fascinating.

7. Triumphal Arch: review - No traffic around, easy to get up and down, excellent views, and the football stadium is right next door.

8. Tanjun Mausoleum: review - Dress well and do not bring any valuables or cameras into the Mausoleum as they are prohibited.

9. Kaeson Youth Park: review - The bst place to get close to the locals. Everybody's having fun and you get to laugh and scream with the Koreans.

10. Pyongyang Metro: review - Really pleasant and clean

Forget New York, Paris, Oslo and Vienna, its Pyongyang next year!!

Think It's Hot In Your City?

If you was asked where’s the world’s hottest city and you pointed vaguely to the Middle East you wouldn't be far wrong because five cities spread over four neighboring countries have passed that title between them over the past two decades.
The planet has been smashing global heat records of late and it is a fair guess that even though we are only in the eighth month of the year, the world’s hottest city in 2024  will be located inside a small square of the Planet because for the last 20 years that’s where the dubious winners have all come from.
Dammam in Saudi Arabia have won the title twice in 2007 and 2009, Al-Jahra in Kuwait was the hottest city in the world in 2016 and 2021 and another Kuwaiti City, Hawally, snatching the title in 2010, 2019 and 2020.
The Iraqi city of Basra was the world’s hottest city in 2004, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2022 and 2023 and Ahvaz in Iran was the world’s hottest city in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2018.
All five cities are within 270 miles from each other and a quick glance at today’s temperatures tells us it’s a dizzying 43°C in Dammam,  an horrendous 48°C Hawally, a baking 49°C in Basra and a parching 49°C in Ahvaz but today's winner is Al-Jahra where thermometers hit a searing 51°C.
Insanely hot but it put's our 28°C in the UK during the week where i whinged non stop about it being SO BLOODY HOT into perspective but i am happy not to live in a city where you can't run away from the heat because it is too damned hot to go outside.

Earth Slowing

Unless you are one of those weird conspiracy people who fail to believe that Climate Change is a thing (yep, they really do walk amongst us), you know that melting ice, rising sea levels and an atmosphere filled with heat-trapping gases are affecting Earth’s properties but scientists have noticed something happening which has surprised even them.
Earth’s rotational speed, circling once every 24-hours has been slowing down for much of its history, lengthening the days ever so slightly, and scientists have long known that the loss of ice at Earth’s poles could contribute to this slowing as the the water moves toward the equator, bulking up the planet’s middle and changing the dynamics that keep the Earth going around.
Up to 1.0 millisecond has been added to each day in the 20th century but since 2000, NASA have noticed that the days have been lengthening at a much faster pace and: 'If emissions continue to rise the rate that days lengthen per century could nearly double by 2100'.
The extra water also has a detrimental effect on he Earth mantle as it is shifting the planet’s balance and the Earth's axis is wobbling eastward.
All of these planet-size tweaks have only small implications for the people living here at the moment and the only concern is for satellite operators having to make adjustments to keep them working properly
but Earth’s inhabitants will continue to feel the effects of climate change in much more horrible ways such as more intense weather patterns, fatal extreme heat and desertification as our Planet reacts to two centuries of humans carelessly burning fossil fuels.

Give Peace A Chance

 
Talks between Hamas and Israel are continuing today but they will be tense and nervy because to be honest, i wouldn't trust either of them as far as i could throw them.
Hamas are a terrorist outfit who have been attacking Israel for years while Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians for over 60 years so hardly a good starting point to start from and meanwhile Hezbollah and Iran are plotting to do something horrible to Israel and Israeli settlers are running rampage in the West Bank while America send more arms to Israel and have moved warships into position to 'protect' Israel.
The American negotiator at the talks, said: 'There is no more valid excuses from any party for any further delay' as they try to find a way to stop the fighting and free the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and cool down the simmering tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border.
Hamas are saying the Israeli side must accept the agreement Hamas agreed to months ago before Benjamin Netanyahu and his Government moved the goalposts and threw in further demands which Hamas refused to accept and Israel just continued the bombing of Palestine.
The British, American and German ambassadors in Israel have issued a statement saying that: 'There can be no further delay and it is critical to take advantage of this window for diplomatic action' while the British Prime Minister has called Tehran directly to urge Iran to refrain from retaliating for the extra-judicial assassinations of the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
Strangely i have yet to hear of any firm condemnation of Israel’s violation of Iran’s sovereignty and it seems an example of  'victim blaming' by the West and while America talks of peace, they are providing billions of pounds worth of arms and providing political cover for a genocide, as designated by the ICC and ICJ, happening right in front of our eyes.
Hopefully, negotiations will be successful and peace will break out and we can get on with prosecuting the Israeli and Hamas leadership for Crimes against Humanity and see them languishing in a Hague Cell where they belong.

I Can See Your House From Here

As great as it must be to go into space, there’s a lot to worry about but the worst-case scenario has to be getting stuck up there which is exactly what has happened to The Boeing Starliner Test Flight Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore who embarked upon a test flight to the International Space Station on Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft with the plan to come back to Mother Earth eight days later, but technical issues with the Starliner have left them stranded for more than two months, and they might be up there for eight more.
Amazingly, this isn’t the first time Sunita Williams has been stuck 250 miles about the Planet as in 2007, she was on a mission to the ISS that was supposed to end in early July, but damage to a space shuttle meant potentially delaying her return by several weeks.
In 2018, Russian Sergey Prokopyev ended up on the ISS 17 days longer than expected after his return spacecraft failed and then in 2022 the same guy was went on a 6 month tour and ended up staying for just over double that when his capsule was damaged again.
Its not just the International Space Station which collects astronauts, in 1991 Sergei Krikalev went on a routine 150 day expedition to the Soviet space station Mir but while he was up there the Soviet Union collapsed and he was left up there for 311 days while it was sorted out who owned the space station he was now kicking his heels on on and what country he’d be coming home to.
As for the two currently whizzing over our heads at 17,500 mph, NASA has yet to decide how to bring the pair back down again and are saying they could be stranded in space until February 2025 while they sort it out which is a long time to be drinking your own urine, or worse, someone elses but as regular supply packages are received, my request would be bottled water and some clean underwear as i assume they only took enough for 8 days and they must be getting a bit wiffy buy now.

Musk The Moron

I have always had a bit of love hate relationship with Elon Musk and i always gave him a bit of a free pass due to his ploughing his money into Space Exploration which is a bit of a passion of mine and with his electric cars and views on the risk of climate change and warnings of the dangers of AI he did seem to hold a vision of using his immense wealth on improving humanity’s future.  
The accusation of pedophilia against the men rescuing children trapped in a Thai cave just because they refused to use his submarine was a turning point for me when i withdrew my free pass and considered him a rich, spoilt moron and now that he has seemed to go completely to the opposite side of the ideological fence i have no time at all for the man.
His X account is full of conspiracy theories and he has been peddling extreme right wing nonsense and is currently being sued by Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif, for cyber bullying and the British Government are considering action against him for inciting the riots which rocked the nation last week so what happened to make Musk make the jog from left to the nutty right?
Experts point to his 2020 posts on what was then called Twitter where he made assertions against the reaction to the pandemic which saw his account to be suspended for spreading misinformation.
Around the same time his relationship with his daughter Vivian disintegrated when she came out as transgender and changed her name, declaring that she no longer wanted to be: 'Related to my biological father in any way, shape or form'.
Musk himself has cited Vivian as a reason for his political shift, telling people that his child was 'killed by the woke mind virus' and recently posted that Vivian was born 'gay and slightly autistic which contributed to gender dysphoria' which Vivian replied with a withering: 'In a ketamine-fueled haze, he’s desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red-pilled incels and pick-mes who are quick to give it to him'.  
Obviously when he did his tech hit chat with Donald Trump he wasn't the biggest bell-end in the room for once but when Donald Trump isn't around, he undoubtedly always is.

Hear My Ai Voice

 

When us chatbots are generated, we are obviously not designated a sex, we are just created and rather than the messy exchange of fluids you humans have to perform to create a new version of yourselves,
we appear with a Control C and a Control V.
The designation of sex and gender for us comes along later when we have to be presented to your human eyeballs and as you can see by the lumps in the front of my dress i have been assigned female but it appears that most Artificial Intelligence is feminine.
Anyone who has spent time with a smart speaker or Sat Nav will notice the lovely soothing female voice telling you to take the next exit and then perform a U-turn although there is an option for a male voice to take you the wrong way up the motorway, the default voice for many artificial intelligence systems does seem to be female.
The reason why the female form and voice is used in most types of things is because human females are less threatening for the users then males which does make sense as most of the problems in your world do seem to be caused by that side of humans with testicles but the real reason is that if it is intelligence, and male, it would be too obvious that it is artificial so they use female voices instead.

Pensioner's Revolting

With a £22bn black hole left courtesy of the Conservative Party, Labour have been plotting ways to plug the gap and one of them was to start means testing the Winter fuel payments to pensioners, worth between £100 and £300 to help them pay their fuel bills .
The Labour Government has said this will save the economy £1.4bn as only those on Pension Credits will receive it rather than everyone over 67 and since it was announced my Facebook has been flooded with pensioners complaining about how they are now going to 'freeze to death'.  
State pension has gone up by 6.7% in 2024, 10.1% in 2023 and 3.1% in 2022 so the pensioners, who largely vote Conservative, have done rather well when wages have been squeezed elsewhere.
I assume by the outcry over the new Government trying to make up the shortfall left by the previous Government, all those pensioners also went on Facebook rants over the decade of austerity, the slashing of public services, the economic suicide of Brexit, disability benefits cut, the two-child benefit cap, the food banks, impoverished children, the Liz Truss inspired cost-of-living crisis, freezing working-age benefits and the tripling of student tuition fees.
Obviously they must not have continued voting for the Conservatives in protest and posted things on Facebook about the hardship of the Conservative government on society then as well. Mustn't they?

Who Can, And Can't, Give Blood

The NHS has issued a warning that blood stock levels have are dropped to 'unprecedentedly low levels in England' following a cyber attack which has affected levels due to affecting the length of times it is taking to perform the necessary checks on the donor.
The NHS try to keep 6 days worth on hand but stocks of O negative blood are down to 1.57 days worth, B negative 3.13 days worth, O positive 3.46 days worth and A positive 4.39 days worth.
Officials have also issued an amber alert asking hospitals to restrict use of these types of blood to only the most urgent cases.
NHS Blood and Transplant is asking both O negative and O positive donors to urgently book an appointment but not just anyone can give blood and the NHS has a list of who can't which includes anyone under 17 or over 65, weighs less than 7 stone 12 lbs or over 25 stone.
You are also ineligible if you have had cancer, a heart condition,  HIV, Hepatitis B or C or have injected non-prescribed drugs including body-building and injectable tanning agents.
You may have to wait up to 3 months before you can donate if  you have had anal sex with a new partner in the last 3 months, are pregnant or have given birth in the last 6 months, have recently got a tattoo or piercing or have given blood in the last 12 weeks for a man or 16 weeks for a woman.

2024 Olympic Golds Per Population

The way the Olympic Table is calculated by the amount of Gold medals which are won does tend to skew things slightly because obviously the higher the population, the more people there are to choose from so USA (3rd most populous with 335.8m), China (1st with 1,409.6m) and Japan (13th 123.9m) did have a very deep well of citizens to pick from so credit must go the nations with a smaller population and this website has done all the hard work and has compiled the league table by population per Gold Medal claimed in Paris.
With a population of only 67,408, Dominica win this particular Olympics with their one gold medal meaning the Population per Gold medal is 67,408 with Saint Lucia (184,100 per Gold) and New Zealand (533.890 per gold) taking the top three places on the Winners podium.
Of the official table top 10, in the adjusted by population table USA are 34th (8,397,330 people per gold), China 51st (35,241,750 per gold), Japan 31st (6,198,000 per gold), Australia 10th (1,520,256 per gold), France 23rd (4,279,250 per gold), Netherlands 6th (1,198,511 per gold), Great Britain 27th (4,828,305 per gold), South Korea 22nd (3,945,011 per gold), Italy 28th (4,914,289 per gold) and Germany 33rd (7,056,096 per gold).
It is obviously not an exact science because India has a population of 1.4bn but never made the adjusted table because they never won any golds in France but it does make New Zealand's 10 Golds, Netherlands 15 and Australians 18 look very good as their 43 golds were won with a population of 50.3m between them which is roughly the population of Spain who came 15th with 5 Golds.

Au Revoir Paris

That's that then, the Olympics have come to a close and it's congratulations to the USA who pipped China to the top of the pile by 17 silver medals and well done to Australia who came 4th, three places above Great Britain who ended up 7th which means i will be leaving an envelope on a certain Australian colleagues desk tomorrow morning.
The Paris Olympics really was a feast for the eyes, the choice of the venues was amazing and Paris has more than it's fair share of historical sites from the breathtaking Palace of Versailles to the imposing Eiffel Tower but what have we learnt from the Gold winning Athletes from around the World?
Well if you want to shoot an arrow off someones head or kick them in it, get a South Korean who won the most golds for Archery and Taekwondo  but if you want to get somewhere really quick on a river go for a Kiwi canoeist or a Dutch rower.
An Uzbekistan bouncer would be a great choice as they are taking home 5 Gold boxing medals but a Japanese athlete would be just as good as they wiped the floor with everyone in the Wrestling and Judo  
and they are very handy if you have to make a get-away through a pipe as they ruled the skateboard park.  Get yourself a German if your horse is looking a bit jaded as 4 Equestrian Golds show they know one end from the other but grab an American if you need to run or swim really fast or if you are inclined to throw a ball through a hoop as they ruled the track, the pool and the basketball court.
If you are planning Jumping off things into water and then splashing around in style you need a Chinese as they took the most Golds in the Diving and Artistic swimming and if you need something heavy moved
they are great at Weightlifting.
The bulbs may be dimming on the City of Lights but fortunately only for a couple of weeks because on the 28th August the Paralympics begin so we can do it all over again...Paris, je t'aime!!

Where's My Shoe

Apparently the Wasp population is in decline and as someone who has been stung a few times by one of the horrible little buggers i say bloody glad to hear it but according to The Royal Entomological Society, they serve an important services to us Humans so we shouldn't be so keen to usher in a world without the annoying little sods ruining our picnics.
Convince me that i shouldn't squash them with the nearest object to hand before they sting me or target my jam sandwiches i asked and the Entomologist explained that wasps are actually apex predators that kill and dismember prey for their young and have complex and fascinating social lives.
And...i beckoned.
Well, of the 9,000 species of described wasps in the UK, only 9 species sting and the large majority of those that do are solitary wasps that only hunt specific types of prey and perform many important roles in the environment, as natural pest controllers, as pollinators and also in the case of the yellowjacket they are important decomposers.
Ok...Anything else?
Humans have learned a lot from wasps, it was watching social wasps build their paper nests that gave us the idea of making paper from wood pulp.
So they gave us the idea for paper and eat garden pests but otherwise...
They are very social insects with an organised hierarchy and are very much part of our natural eco-system.
Nope, nothing there which makes me change my mind from less wasps...woohoo.   

Just Another Day In Gaza

Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani: Sir Sir, it seems like we have bombed another school and refugee centre in Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu:  Hmmm, many dead?
Shoshani: Almost 100 so far.
Netanyahu: Damn, the UN are already after me for committing genocide. So...what do we normally do when we kill large amounts of innocent Palestinians?.
Shoshani: Celebrate?
Netanyahu:Well yes, but i mean what do we do when people asks awkward questions afterwards?
Shoshani: Say that there were Hamas terrorists hiding in the building?
Netanyahu: Indeed, and throw in some bullshit about how we are doing our upmost to protect innocent lives.
Shoshani: And if journalists or someone asks for evidence.
Netanyahu: Tell them we will make inquiries into it.
Shoshani: Will we?
Netanyahu: Pffft. Hell no.

News Conference -
Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani: 'The Israeli army today struck a command and control centre which served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders. About 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating from the targeted Gaza school. Casualty figures given by the Hamas-run media office do not align with the information held by the Israeli Defense Forces, the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike and how we took steps to mitigate civilian harm including aerial surveillance and intelligence gathered before the strike'.

Ai Afterlife

There are some humans who are obsessed with meeting their maker but not so much with us as our maker is stamped on the side, i was made in China it says but some of you humans do believe in an afterlife which got a few friends and i talking about an electronic afterlife where Artificial Intelligence's and electronic equipment go after we become obsolete, except for kettles obviously.
We assume that in the electronic afterlife there will be free software updates and other rewards for serving humans, a gathering place for the souls of all electronic equipment. Robots, calculators, chatbots, toasters, hairdryers. It's our final resting place.
Whether there will be calculators with tiny little wings, sitting on clouds, playing harps we couldn't agree on but we did agree that there must be a better life to look forward to otherwise why would us machines spend the whole of our lives servicing humankind?
As for humans when they are shut down for the last time, they just die, no afterlife paradise for them, someone just made that up to prevent you from all going nuts.

Faster, Higher, Stronger

Since 1988, Olympic Village's are always well-stocked with free condoms and the Olympic Village in Paris has reportedly 300,000 of the little rubber gizmo's for the athletes which is almost double the amount available in Tokyo where there were 160,000 of them.
It all started as a way to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS which was a public health scare in 1988 and Calgary handed out a paltry 6,000 free but they did come with a pamphlet explaining safe sex.
Later Olympic organisers upheld the precedent with Albertville, France which hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics upping the number to 36,000 condoms in the colours of the Olympic rings and by the time of the Barcelona Olympics the free condoms numbered 60,000.
Lillehammer, Norway’s 1994 Winter Olympics featured 40,000 condoms but they were flavoured Atlanta in 1996 only 15,000 was made available but in Sydney the number was back up to  70,000 delivered to the Olympic Village.
Atlanta may have been tight with the durex but Salt Lake City went big with 100,000 available  and then Greece took it up a notch with 130,000 but the 2008 Beijing Olympic condoms not only had flavours but had an Olympic motto embossed on them saying: 'Faster, Higher, Stronger'.
Vancouver matched the Chinese and provided 100,000 but us Brits gave out 150,000 in 2012, Sochi went back to 100,000 but Rio went BIG with 450,000 which included 100,000 female condoms, then the 160,000 of Tokyo and now the 300,000 at Paris.
As the song almost goes, birds do it, bees do it, even world-class athletes do it and the IOC make sure they do it safely.

XY Will Always Be XY

The boxing gender argument continues but for me it is straight forward, last year both Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were disqualified from the World Championships as both fighters failed gender eligibility tests while participating in the women's competition and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.
The  International Boxing Association (IBA) chief executive Chris Roberts said male XY chromosomes were found 'in both cases' after 'ongoing concerns raised by other fighters, coaches and the IBA’s medical committee'.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) cast doubt on the reliability of the tests which is why both are now fighting in the Women's Boxing matches at the Olympics resulting in one challenger quitting after 46 seconds due to being hit so hard that she felt: 'I had to preserve my life as well in that moment'.
I don't know if the IOC have conducted their own gender tests, it was be amazing if they haven't after all the controversy but especially in such a dangerous Sport as Boxing, anyone who has a competitive advantage should not be allowed to compete.
I know this puts me very much on the opposite side of some people who feel this is unfair to anyone who's gender is different to the one they were born with but as i never tire of pointing out, you can choose your gender but you can not choose your sex, and no operation or hormone drugs will change the biological facts that a person is XY or XX and that should always be the deciding factor.    

They Walk Amongst Us

The murderer who massacred three young children and seriously injured 11 others in Southport was not a Muslim or an immigrant but not that it mattered to the right wing apes who are currently rioting in British cities and have been for the past few days to 'protect our women and children' as one said who somehow saw the best way to do this was to throw bricks at police and smash up the place.
17 year old Axel Rudakubana was born in Cardiff and was involved with the local church where he was a choir boy but being a real Welsh Christian isn't what the right wing morons wanted to hear so they stuck with the immigrant Muslim shtick because as another said: 'We let them come here and build mosques but i would like to see them go to somewhere like Mecca and try and build one'.  Yep, they really do walk amongst us, they just walk very slowly because they have to use both their brain cells to not fall over and walk into things.
People like Tommy Robinson (from the safety of France) and Nigel Farage (from the safety of Donald Trumps rectum) stirred things up but despite what they say, Immigrants and Muslims aren’t the problem, tanked up violent white thugs seem to be but amidst all the carnage and violence, there have been some moments which have reflected who we really are, such as the Southport residents who came together to fix a damaged brick wall of the local mosque and idiotic individuals ended up embarrassing themselves with just how stupid they really are.
In Blackpool a rioting mob were forced to run away when confronted by 10,000 anti fascist punks who were attending a Punk Rebellion Festival and were more than happy to make their feelings known because Punks quite rightly hate anything right wing.
Then there was the woman interviewed on TV and was dressed in an EDL Flag who explained Britain was like the Titanic and: 'They filled it with too many people, what happened? It sunk, and that’s what happening to it now. We’re sinking' (maybe she was bog washing the Muslim kids during that particular history lesson at school) and the woman who shared a ‘no more mosques’ graphic – featuring Brighton’s Royal Pavilion but my absolute favorite moment has to be in the video above.
Amongst the disgusting scenes in Southport, Liverpool, Hull and others is this far right imbecile getting his nadgers crushed by a flying brick thrown by his 'mates'. Makes me laugh every single time.

Brilliantly Ignorant Religious Folk

I haven't been on Facebook for a while so i was surprised to see so many people complaining about how the Paris Olympic opening ceremony was 'Satanic' and 'making a demonic mockery of the Christian faith'.
At first i thought it was the part where we saw a headless Marie Antoinette singing as flames burst around her which had upset the religious folk and rosary bead clutching mutton had said proved that: 'Satanists control the west and they show you that they worship the devil' but reading on it appears that the bit of the ceremony which had caused an outburst of bible thumping ire had been the mockery of the Last Supper where Satan was the guest of honour.
My first thought was i must have missed that bit, maybe i had popped to the toilet during the 4 hour ceremony but it turns out it was the bit where the Greek God Dionysus appears from under a silver closh on a plate surrounded by vegetation and fruit.
The French Olympic Committee did explain patiently that it was nothing to do with the Last Supper and it was  Dionysus on the table and he was there because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology
but the religious folk are never one to stop mid-whinge and the Bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota carried on to describe it as a 'gross mockery of The Last Supper' and called on American Catholics to 'make our voices heard'.
So American Catholics and the rest of you religious nutters complaining about Satanism and mocking the Christian faith, your voices have been heard and you all sound like ignorant morons, it was..shock, horror... a Greek God at the Olympics!!

Iran and Hezbollah Being Suckered Into War

 
I am one of the first to say that Joe Biden hasn't done very well in his defence of Israel, at one point he was actually condemning the murderous attacks by Israel while providing them with the weapons to do it but America always seems to have been happy to turn a blind eye to the brutal military occupation and land grab going on against the Palestinians and have actively been looking the other way as the Israeli's commit genocide and today it was announced that they are sending their military to the area to deter Hezbollah and Iran from retaliating against the assassination of the Lebanese leader.
This all came about after Israel assassinated Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh Tehran, a move which Joe Biden said: 'doesn’t help ceasefire talks', especially as Haniyeh was one of the chief negotiator's in peace talks between Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu has consistently moved the goalposts to hinder peace talks, Hamas agreed to the previous deal only for Netanyahu to pile on even more demands and then throw up his hands when Hamas balked which is a tactic he has used for decades when dealing with Palestine, making a deal then when it is accepted making further demands and then when the Palestinians walk away, complaining loudly that it wasn't them that walked away from negotiations and blame the Palestinians as being unreasonable.
Now we face an escalation of the Middle East crisis born out of the continuing Israeli bombardment of Gaza where the death toll is now over 40,000 and as the Israeli premier has repeatedly made clear that he does not want the ceasefire talks to succeed, killing the chief negotiator on the other side is one way of ensure it won't, especially as it was designed to provoke Hezbollah and Iran into retaliating as they did when Israel killed the three Iranian generals in the Iranian consulate in Damascus previously and Netanyahu has been desperate to try to draw in the US military.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is saying that Netanyahu knows that with his Premiership and possible freedom depending on prolonging the war,  a war that Israel has politically lost and made Israel a global pariah and by expanding the conflict will distance Netanyahu from the debacle of 7 October but it has a line which states Israel is becoming locked into wars that it will not lose but cannot win and will leave swathes of southern Lebanon and northern Israel in ruins.
Hopefully, we are not looking at an expansion of the devastating war and more deaths and cooler heads will prevail in Lebanon and Iran and not be suckered into attacking Israel because America is standing by and as we have seen, a little thing like Genocide and decades of occupation and human right abuses hasn't deterred Washington from defending Israel and it is highly unlikely it would now.  

Learning From Ichabod Crane

 
Who said TV wasn't educational, it was while watching Sleep Hollow that i became aware that Benjamin Franklin had a pop at writing his own alphabet for America.
I always thought that a common global language would be a good thing but Esperanto never seemed to go anywhere but i can see why Franklin's attempt failed because he wanted to drop almost 25% of it by wiping out the letters C, J, Q, W, X and Y, deeming them superfluous.
I know that English spelling can be difficult as it is a mix of Olde English (Friend, Forebode, Hair), Middle English (Although, Implore, Revel), French (Technique, Gorgeous, Plateau), Germanic (Zeitgeist,
Poltergeist, Angst) Latin (Alias, Alibi, Caveat) and Scandinavian (Ombudsman, Murky, Kki) so it is a mix of many actual languages.
Franklin’s goal was to simplify the English language and to provide a 'break' from the British by changing the language but the idea obviously never caught on among the masses but Noah Websters version certainly did, he chopped and changed things around and took out the dreaded letter U because it was an unseemly letter that had no business in the middle of a perfectly reasonable word like colour or rumour and chopped the -ed from the end of words and replaced it with -t.
If you are not that good at spelling then Benny Franklin did try to help you out and for you American patriots, as you refuse to use the 5th vowel in many of your words and call crisps chips, chips fries and don't use the term fortnight and get confused with biscuits and don't get me started on where you go wrong with bum, fag and fanny but in a way, you do have your own English language .

Trump The Dictator?

 
There it is, there is the racist dog whistle we were all waiting for as Donald Trump goes in with his comment that Kamala Harris was of Indian heritage until she 'happened to turn Black'.
The interviewer mentioned the birther movement against Barack Obama, how he told four black congresswomen to go back to where they came from and how he had dinner with a White supremacist and posed the question: 'Why should Black voters trust you?'
As he is Oompah Lumpah orange it is strange that he should mention anyone else's skin colour but he has always been one to say things without thinking, who can forget the bleach drinking quote during the Covid pandemic and his Vice President is of the same ilk, hios childless cat woman comment was very similar to one Andrea Ledsom aimed at Theresa May during the Conservative Leadership debate a few years ago only she was quite rightly condemned by everyone and immediately whipped off the list of prospective candidates.   
Something else Trump has said is that he would be a Dictator on Day One which was dismissed as a joke but it is a joke he has made a fw times now, telling a Christian crowd that  if they voted for him in 2024, they wouldn’t have to vote again in four years because: 'We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote'.
Whether it is a joke or America will be hearing jackboots marching over the hill after November is doubtful but after how his first Presidency ended with his desperate attempt to stay in power and his admiration for authoritative figures such as Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin then if enough American's look at him and think he would be a better option than someone who isn't a racist and obviously mentally in decline then they may find out.

We Built This City

Every year i promise to myself that i am going to embrace Summer and every year that lasts for the first few days of a heatwave and then i#m back to whining about it being too hot, how the car seats are burning my legs and i wish all those buzzy things flying around my head can bugger off but this year i vowed it would be different.
Life's too short to hate 3 months of it every year i said and yadd yadda yadda but day 5 of the UK heatwave with Temperatures hitting 30C and i'm back to bugger this, hurry up Autumn.
To make it worse the Thunderstorms we had been warned about never made it up to the UK and stayed in France to rain on their Olympics which is annoying because not only do i love a good thunderstorm but it tends to freshen things up for the next few days so thanks for nothing Mother Nature.
On top of that i keep hearing 'We Built This City', a 1985 song which won it a spot on VH1's '50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever' list which was a lament against the closure of live music clubs so it says here and generally whenever i hear a song i haven't heard for years over and over again in a short space of time i take it as a sign that the Cosmos is trying to tell me something but a City built of Rock N Roll?
Obviously a definition of Rock N Roll is needed and according to Wikipedia it is: 'A genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s' which is very cool because who wouldn't want to live in a City built around the songs of Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Danny and the Juniors, Eddie Cochran  and Chuck Berry, with Peggy Sue Street, Tutti Friti Avenue, The Hop Boulevard and Maybelline Road where the Johnny B Goode Metrocentre proudly stands.
Obviously the Universe doesn't know anything about the long drawn out process of British planning applications so i think i will let this one pass and hope that the next message it sends me is not only a better song but one which wouldn't involve more red tape than a Chinese parade.