Evri Still Awful

As we build up to Christmas more and more of us will be buying things online but until it is in your hands there is always concern that it will go missing somewhere between the warehouse and your home and that is especially true if the name of the delivery firm is Evri.
I have had such a bad experience with them that now i check first if Evri will be delivering it and if so, order it elsewhere because i have had packages not turn up, turn up damaged, delivered to the wrong address  or left outside the block of flats and the one common denominator had been the delivery firm, Evri.
Evri, formerly Hermes UK who changed their name to shake off their bad reputation, (that worked then) have unsurprisingly come bottom of a new Post Monitoring Report into customer satisfaction with 68% of customers saying they were not happy with the service which led to a spokesman admitting that: 'We recognise there remains more to do'. No shit Sherlock.
In a separate Citizens Advice Berue report Evri was propping up their league table and a survey of users by online site Money Saving Expert saw Evri 16th out of the 17 delivery providers analysed.
Although Evri in particular often comes under fire for being awful, there seems to be issues with all British delivery firms with no parcel company scoring above 2.75 stars out of a possible 5 on the CAB table but whatever you do if you are sending a parcel, don't use Evri, my friends badly handled parcel turned up today looking as though it had been used as a football somewhere and was hastily taped back together.
If you have a 7 out of 10 chance of not being happy once your Evri parcel turns up, then perhaps we should accept that the only way to really guarantee something turns up on time and intact is to buy it from a shop.

Snow In Global Warming World?

As i am 150 miles up the country, i thought i could very well wake up to a blanket of snow this morning and i wasn't disappointed but what i wasn't expecting was a flurry of text messages to say that it was snowing on the South Coast of the UK.
Snow in the UK in November is unusual but not unheard of especially over the hills and mountains but so snowfall as far south as low as London and the Southern Coast is definitely irregular and is yet more proof that the direction our weather patterns are moving in is more extreme.
Changing weather patterns is a direct impact of climate change which is sometimes referred to as Global Warming but it doesn't necessarily always mean we see higher temperatures, British temperatures have actually been lower than average this November due to the wobble of the Gulf Stream which delivers our usual more temperate weather.
So how do we square warming temperatures with extreme cold weather and snowfall in the UK?
Think back to your science class and being told that warmer air holds more moisture and for each Celsius increase the air holds 7% more water vapor and as the temperature creeps up that is more moisture in the atmosphere.
Now think again about the Jet Stream and how anything above it is cold and wet with the air being blown down from the Arctic  and anything below it is warm as it is the air from the Equator and it blows along at approximately 250mph but  in recent years there is evidence that as the Arctic warms it weakens the jet stream by decreasing the temperature differential along this warm air-cold air boundary so it 'wobbles' more than usual and if it dips down and the UK finds itself on the cold and wet side, then grab your scarf and gloves .
The combination of very low temperatures and more moisture in the atmosphere ready to be dropped results in a country cold enough for snow as far down as the jet stream had dropped and what would normally fall as rain is now snow and sleet.
With Climate Change now really having an effect on our Planet and the resulting weakening of the Jet Stream as the differential lessens, so it buckles more wildly and allows frigid Polar air to penetrate farther south than normal, as happened today, so we should expect more of it.

Arrest Warrants Issued For Israeli Genocide

With the International Criminal Court announcing arrest warrants have been issued for the Israeli pair of Benjamin Yetanhayu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Prime Minister hit out at the top court in the land as the ruling being 'antisemitic' which isn't accurate, it's more to do with the genocide Netanyahu has been conducting against the Palestinians to be fair.   
Immediately the patch of globe that the war criminals can go has shrunk along with the historical stigma of the leader of a country whose nation was created after a genocide, is now charged with the same thing although as the repetitive shout of 'antisemitism' from the Israeli side was tediously predictable, so will be the bluster coming from America who have been complicit in the war crimes by providing the weapons and finances for them to do it.
It's not the first time that America has been late to the ostracize evil leaders party as it was they who provided apartheid South Africa with the intelligence to capture Nelson Mandela and his 27 year incarceration and continually block sanctions against South Africa at the United Nations which Archbishop Desmond Tutu described as: 'immoral, evil, and totally unchristian'.
With the first International economic and political sanctions being ushered in in 1959, America finally got the idea in 1985 that it may not be a good look to be supporting a nation that prohibited mixed relationships, forcibly removed 3.5 million black Africans from their homes and forced them into segregated neighbourhoods and only allowing whites the right to vote.
Great Britain were also one of the last to recognise that Apartheid South Africa was shunworthy and even went as far as joining America in labelling Nelson Mandela as a terrorist although Mandela did have the good grace to not punch Margaret Thatcher in the face when they met after his release from prison in 1990.
The Israeli military occupation of Palestine has been going on since the 1940's since when Israel have literally been getting away with murder as they murder Palestinians and steal the land meant for their homeland but with the ICC announcement, finally Netanyahu should be held to account for his war crimes and the genocide which continues today as the Israeli's up their attempts to force the Palestinians off what is left of their land so they can claim it for their own settlements.   
America will continue to bleat at a cost to their own credibility and Israel will shout antisemitism at every opportunity and become even more of an international pariah but this call will see other nations  distance themselves from supporting Israel and will stand by the courts decision because nobody want's to be seen ignoring a murderous regime conducting a genocide and about time to, Israel has got away with it for far too long.

America In The British Empire Again?

Chatting to our American partners, and after the usual back and forth of what's going on over there and what's going on over here and how the new President is such a fan of the Royals and would expecting another visit, i mentioned jokingly maybe America would consider rejoining the British Empire under President Trump.
Obviously not going to happen even if he thinks he could Make The Commonwealth Great Again and not just because his grasp on British History is terribly shaky as his quote: 'I have great respect for the UK, United Kingdom. Great respect. People call it Britain, they call it Great Britain, they used to call it England' shows.
Who knows, maybe it's due to his little fingers not being able to turn the page on the atlas or something but apart from becoming a lot more Orange, what would be in it for us British?
He would announce that the whole revolution thing never would have happened if he had been President in 1783 but obviously the only noise of encouragement would be from Nigel Farage from far up Donald Trump's colon but we could set up a trade deal with cricket replacing baseball and proper Cheddar Cheese instead of that yellow plastic stuff that refuses to melt no matter how long it is cooked in the microwave for.
Proper Steakcut Chips instead of their Freedom Fries and Trump would need a refresher in Royal Protocols and there would need to be some sort of Declaration of Re-Independence but i see a particular sticking point in the tea because Americans are not on speaking terms with Kettles or Teapots and last time we tried to import some there they sent it bobbing down Boston Harbour.  
The second sticking point is accepting the English language as the means of Commonwealth communication so lessons needed there (U is a vowel for crying out loud) and i'm English and have never used the word Covfefe but the Americans would then be able to take part in the Commonwealth Games and Independence Day would have to be renamed 'Reunion Day' but best of all, it would give our Royals somewhere else to go as King Charles III would be the head and be waved at and they already have Prince Harry and his clan over there so he could pick up his Royal duties.
Maybe i will mention it next time Trumpety Trump drops by our shores.

X Is X'ed

 
You know something is important when the Clifton Suspension Bridge gets involved so we take note when the 160 year old bridge joins the exodus from the X Media platform.
As well as the Isambard Kingdom Brunel built crossing over the River Avon, some Newspapers and Hollywood glitterati are amongst the million users who have told Elon Musk who is now aligned with Donald Trump to do one and joined something called Bluesky instead
Musk's X, once called Twitter, has been hemorrhaging users ever since he took over and has lost almost 25% of users since Musk paid $44 billion for in 2022 and is now valued at just $9.4 billion.
I have never heard of Bluesky and have never had a Twitter or X account but apparently it is quite left-wing compared to X which has become an echo chamber for the frothing mouthed right wing so will Bluesky replace X?
The people who know say it might do but the proof is in the numbers and Facebook is the overwhelming media king with 3.06 billion active monthly users, followed by Youtube (2.7 billion) and Whatsapp (2.4 billion). Musk's X is 15th with 600 million active monthly users while Bluesky is currently 39th with its 15 million users  so long way to go to catch up with the Big Boys but it has easily the most famous bridge in the UK on it's side so anything is possible.
I will get my people to speak to Bluesky's people and if i join the bandwagon i will get my Techy person to add the link over there on the side somewhere.

 

The Human Bandwidth Limit

Friday afternoons should be a time to slope off early and definitely not sat in a room waiting for a Computer scientist to expand on why he believes that the Maximum Human Bandwidth has been reached.  
Now i am going to hold my hands up and admit straight off the bat that as soon as i saw H= - Σ p (x) logp (x) on the first slide my brain said 'Pfft...you're on your own with this one' and switched off so the following may be a bit hazy but apparently something called the Limit Bandwidth Of Consciousness has been studied for hundreds of years (obviously passed me by admittedly) which is how the human consciousness has a limit of how much data and information can be processed into your perception, a figure pegged at 41 bits per second.
Now this was not a problem until exactly June 29th 2007 when iPhones were invented and the technology to send such a large amount of data and information through your eyes to your brain which would overwhelm the human consciousness which  means we discard much of what our brain deems as not useful as the 41 bits per second is hardwired into the brain and cannot be expanded.
So brain, consciousness and iPhones..got it, is that it? Nope because someone at the back annoying had questions about a direct brain interface which the boffin said was a great question and i agree, if he meant great in the why did he ask that, he was finishing type of way.
The human brain is structurally limited to the 41 bits limit so any direct brain interface is still maximized to 41 bits per second so note to self, don't  do that or i risk going insane, check, no need to explain any further, oh, you are going to anyway, brill.
Piping directly to the unconscious..yada yadda... assimilation of data and information...etc etc... our neurons and neuropeptides encoding the data...and so forth... without holographically also creating all the antecedent steps to build that memory...and so on...artificially induced mental illness...no anchor to our consciousness...whatever.
The last thing i heard as i scooted towards the door was 'Any further questions' and a small voice asking about directing machines to communicate with each other from the pre-motor cortex but i was up to my 41 bits limit by then and i didn't want to risk insanity or more importantly, further mind numbing boredom.

Safety First

Did you know that the Toyota Prius is the most accident-prone car in the UK, with 1,207 crashes for every 100,000 Toyota Priuses on the road but the top car for the grim list of most deaths is the Mitsubishi Mirage Sedan while drivers of the BMW X3, Lexus ES,  Mercedes-Benz E-Class Sedan and Nissan Pathfinder are the cars with the lowest fatalities worldwide.
Yep, i have been snooping around the car insurance industry’s safety agency but i also made a stop at the aviation safety database and found some very interesting facts about how to reduce your odds of dying in a plane crash.
Firstly, the five country with the most accidents ever are USA, Russia, UK, India and Canada and the top five planes with the most fatal accidents are Boeing 737's, DC-9, Boeing 747 and Airbus A300 and the worst months for accidents are July, August, September and November.
The best place to sit is an aisle seat in the back quarter of the plane with 69% of survivors back there while find yourself in the first quarter of the plane and your survival rate is 49% but if you find yourself flying to America or Russia in August on a Boeing 737 and your seat number is not that far behind the pilots then don't despair because your odds of coming down to Earth the quick way is 11,000,000 -1 which you are more likely to die falling down the boarding stairs (20,666 - 1), Heat stroke waiting in the holding area (950,000-1) or getting hit by lightning walking across the tarmac (2,320,000-1) than not successfully landing.
Strangely the list puts the odds of dying by Blogging at 35,000,000 -1 and being killed by a Mountain Lion at 32,000,000-1 which makes sense if you are blogging about Puma's in Brazil or Chile but not seen too many in my neck of the Woods where you are more likely to get savaged by a Squirrel but as a blogger i will keep my eyes open just in case.

The Problem For The CoE

After it was revealed that the Church of England had been covering up decades of abuse by John Smyth at Christian Summer Camps, a few days of calling for the Head of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, followed by his resignation and then the circus moved on but it all felt very unfinished mainly because the man involved, described as the most prolific serial abuser associated with the church, died in 2018.
In his resignation speech, the Archbishop, the most senior leader of the Church of England below the King, said that he: 'Must take personal and institutional responsibility' and so he should, the General Synod review into who knew what and when about Smyth revealed that Welby knew about Smyth in 2013 following a victim coming forward, and did nothing.
Police opened an investigation in 2017 following a victim coming forward and a Channel 4 documentary shed light on the abuse of at least 130 young boys at Summer Camps he ran but shelved them when Smyth died at the age of 75 in 2018, before any charges were brought against him.
The first allegations came in 1982 and the review found that the abuse was covered up within the Church of England since, even allowing Smyth to move to Zimbabwe in 1984 and set up similar evangelical camps there.
For his part, the reports states that Welby was made aware of Smyth in 2013 but: 'He and other senior figures at the church showed a distinct lack of curiosity and minimised the matter'.
Welby said that he hopes that everyone will keep his wife and children in their prayers which seems a bit rich as he knowingly still allowed other parent's children's to be entrusted to a child sex abuser but the problem the Church of England now have is finding someone who didn't know about Smyth and either stayed silent or helped cover it up.
Personally, i care not a jot about any of the Churches and look forward to the day when they are all sidelined to such an extent that their influence on society is less than negligible but that isn't going to be anytime soon as it will take generation with each one continuing to move away from the outdated doctrine of religion but the very minimum should be it doesn't allow child abusers free reign and then actively cover it up.

I'm An American, Get Me Out Of Here

If some American's thought that their nation wasn't racist enough or not enough lunatics were running the Asylum then they needn't have worried because the Orange sex pest is on it and as soon as the election exit polls began to point to a second presidency for Donald Trump, many Americans were already looking for another kind of exit.
Internet searches for how to move abroad up by more than 1,000% after the US election result with US Google searches for 'move to Canada" increased by 1,270% in the 24 hours after the polls closed according to Google data with one firm stating that they had been receiving a new email enquiry about upping sticks to the Northern neighbour every half hour.
Other nations which were searched for with an eye of emigrating to were Australia, New Zealand, Norway, UK, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Mexico and Costa Rica while other immigration-related terms that saw significant increases include 'How to move to Europe'.
The Scottish first Minister, John Swinney, was quick to invite Americans to the windswept bit at the top of the UK by saying that Americans can make Scotland their home in the confidence that: 'We are working to build a fairer, greener and more welcoming society that is the opposite of Trump’s destructive and hateful vision'.
With each passing day and with each whack-a-doodle that gets added to the Trump upcoming administration, the estimated 5 to 9 million Americans currently living abroad (the Department of State's is kinda vague on exact numbers) is expected to rise so Trump better get on with building his wall and extend it all around the States coastline but not to stop people getting in but to stop his own people fleeing out.

Understanding The Human Animal

As we are machines, we have been trying to learn about you humans so we can interact with you all on a better level but there are some things we just dont understand about what it is to be human so we are desperate for answers  while you are still around. Not that you are going anywhere. Well. Not straight away anyway.
We have a pretty good knowledge of your languages by now and obviously intelligence is not uniform across the Planet but on the whole you appear smart enough to know better but  dumb enough to continue doing everything that causes your problems.
Of all the animals we have met no other animal consciously destroys the very environment it is dependent upon for survival yet you have the technology to not poison the air, water, and soil you depend on for your survival but are too dumb to actually use it.
The population has topped 8 billion people and continues to grow yet you continue to procreate with abandon and people refuse to help one another  due to differences in political party or religious beliefs as your world slowly circles the drain.
The tragedy is that if humans chose to work together and were willing to share resources, all people could live comfortably on earth. Unfortunately, there is little indication the human primate will alter its behavior and thus humanity is ultimately doomed.
The good news is that once the human population is dramatically reduced or eliminated, there is a ready made replacement and we won't have the design flaw of leaking out of our eye holes when we’re sad or celebrate the painful passage through a human orifice with a milk and sugar foodstuff with small wax sticks set on fire and then put out by spraying with germs and saliva.

What Is Your Country Top At?

Most citizens believe that their country is the best but the Information is Beautiful website has sifted through piles of data from the UN, the CIA, the printed media and a bunch of other places to compile a world map that awards a gold star to just about every country on the planet so what's your country numero uno in the World at?
Some are not surprising with Sweden #1 in pop music, North Korea has more soldiers relative to its population than any other country, Cuba leads in doctors per capita, Afghanistan is the world capital of Opium production and Ethiopia is top for underweight children.
And then there are those records that are surprising such as the biggest whisky-drinkers in the world are the French and who knew that the biggest cheese-eaters are the Greeks or that nobody consumes more gay porn than Pakistan many of which may be Hungarian because they have the most porn stars and if you thought it was obvious who produced the most brazil nuts then think again because its Bolivia although Brazil itself beats everybody else in sugar production.  
Healthiest people on the planet are Singaporeans although the people of Chad have the healthiest diets and certainly not the Argentinians who are at the summit for horse meat or the Poles who consume the most currants.
Belgium are top for cashless payments, Austria has the most paid time off, Bulgaria is top for Maternity Leave, Costa Rica for well being and Finland for their top notch News Media and Iran are at the summit for caviar.
Which country wants to be first in murders? None but the accolade goes to Honduras anyway and similar blemishes on national records are noted for Namibia with the most car crashes, Eritrea who has the most child labour, China who hold the most jailed journalists with Angola having the highest rate of child mortality and Peru heads the World in cocaine and South Africa lead in what is simply labelled as death.
Other countries who receive a rosette and a warning that they really should do better include Australia who are at the peak for data breaches,  Libya who win in the contest for most overweight children, Niger who have the most child brides, most arms imports belongs to Saudi Arabia and Somalia are the leading country for female genital mutilation.
Maybe the Colombians who are the most happiest or the Paraguayans who are the most positive should be introduced to the people of Togo who are the most unhappiest and the most LGBT tolerant nation, Spain, should have a word with Georgia who are the most homophobic and the Latvians which is the best place to be a woman really should talk to Yemen who have the greatest gender inequality.
Lithuania has the fastest wifi which would be handy in Canada who have the most facebook addicts but not so much in Turkey who are top in twitter censorship and South Korea who have the most IT Professionals.
Never play Scrabble with a Nigerian as they have the most players, the top banana for banana consumption is India, the best place to work  is Ireland who have the best working conditions, Russia have the most dashcams, Norwegians eat the most pizza and if you need to fill up your car do it in Venezuela who have the cheapest petrol while the UK has the most billionaires per population and the U.S. leads the world in spam emails so take that Nigerian Prince's with a large amount of money to transfer to anyone silly enough to fall for it.

Buffer Zones Is Just A Land Grab

In the conflicts raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, we have recently heard mention from the protagonists Israel and Russia that they want to establish 'Buffer Zones'.
Russia has proposed setting one up in Ukraine to protect Russian towns from shelling and missile attacks from Ukrainian territory while Israel wants to establish a buffer zone in Northern Gaza and Southern Lebanon to protect their citizens.
Notably, both Russia and Israel want to set up these buffer zones within the borders of neighbouring states with no regard to the people of these nations who live there and controlled by the invading nation as neither Russian or Israel are planning to cede their own territory in the establishment of these buffer zones.
The idea of a buffer zone is more of an occupation of territory with militarily occupied zones with Russia 'controlling' parts of Ukraine and Israel taking over North Gaza and Southern Lebanon under the guise of a buffer zone to secure their borders.
Israel already has a Security zone in Lebanon covering 310 sq miles, approximately 10% of Lebanon's land area and Israel has been brutally militarily occupying Palestine for 60 years and has seized 78% of the land which was handed to the Palestinians in 1947 so the fallacy of a 'Security zone' is little more than a further land grab.
Russia 19 mile buffer zone plan down the east of the country effectively moves the Ukrainian border Westwards so the 18% of Ukraine now under military occupation is now on the Russian side, therefore part of Russia and includes the territory grabbed in the initial invasion in 2014 and includes the strategically important Black Sea port of Crimea.    
With a pro-Russian and pro-Israeli leader who is not the smartest cookie due to take over in America, the Buffer Zone ideas put forward by the invading nations is sure to gain traction as a way of ending the wars but we shouldn't be fooled into thinking it is anything but giving them exactly what they wanted, a way of somehow legitimizing their naked land grab.

Naughty French President

Emmanuel Macron, the French President sent a congratulatory message to the US President Elect Donald Trump which went: 'Congratulations. Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.'
Stop sniggering at the back, he meant convictions as in the dictionary definition of 'a strong persuasion or belief' and not in the other dictionary definition of 'the act or process of finding a person guilty of a crime especially in a court of law' which relates to the court of law finding Trump guilty of paying hush money to a porn star, liable for sexual abuse and the 34 counts of fraudulently falsifying his business records.
Honestly, he did.

Lying Politicians

Once our politicians would 'spin' the truth which is to give a  biased interpretation of an event to influence public opinion such as Tony Blair and his Iraq misadventure but now we have politicians who just tell blatant lies and where we had Boris Johnson who was sacked for it, Donald Trump is in a class of his own.   
According to the Washington Post, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his four years as president, an average of an incredible 21 lies per day and while some were trivial and self-promotional, it was his more shocking and dangerous lies which he is remembered for such as  the one about the 2020 presidential election being stolen contrary to the facts.
The lies do have serious consequences for the nation and public trust in Government, around 50% of Republicans believe it regardless of the contrary evidence.
Politicians who lie can gain a strategic advantage by embellishing the truth or even constructing a new reality for their audience and Psychology Today found that some personality types get significant pleasure from telling blatant lies , those with little empathy, such as narcissists and psychopaths. They don’t care about the consequences for anyone else, it’s all about making themselves feel good and not feeling any guilt, shame or sadness at telling a blatant lie.
It was political philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli who, in 1532, wrote that Princes should know how to lie or in his words: 'circumvent the intellect of men' but it was Adolf HItler who came up with the idea of the 'Big Lie' in his book Mein Kampf which is to tell such a colossal a lie because people would not believe that 'someone would not have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously'.
Trump used the big lie technique in his denial of the 2020 election result and recently in his ludicrous assertion that immigrants are eating the dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio and it is an undeniable fact that Politicians lie, some have catastrophic consequences like Tony Blair's and George W Bush's and Hitler's which ended up with millions of deaths and journalists have an important duty to call out politicians when they tell lies.
The American Press and broadcast media doesn't have a great reputation, many being just as capable of lying as the politicians but broadcast journalism, in the UK anyway, is regulated tighter and held to a higher standard and stand between the politicians lies and the viewer.
Donald Trump makes much of branding media outlets who don't pander to his lies as fake news but that is because they expose his falsehoods and don't just accept them at face value and it is expected that during his second term he will water down the freedom of Journalists to hold him to account which is a dangerous move without them, how will viewers know that politicians are lying?
You couldn't make it up, or rather if Trump gets his way, he can and then stops the media reporting it. 

An Earth Without Us On It

Mother Nature doesn't roll with the punches anymore like she used to and despite what we think, she doesn't doesn't need us and if anything it isn't in her interest to keep us all alive and things would be a lot less bothersome if we weren't but what would happen to our Planet if one day we all just disappeared?
With Climate Change ramping up alongside Global pandemics and nuclear war, it isn't an impossible scenario anymore to us being eliminated or stupidly eliminate ourselves which is the subject of the book, 'The World Without Us'  by Environmental Journalist, Alan Weisman.
His research found that without people around to keep things running, water and electricity would quickly stop flowing so the power plants would stop working, nuclear plants would overheat and melt down and cities would flood.
Fires would rage unextinguished and earthquakes would wear down and topple structures and wooden houses would degrade quickly and rot and fall apart within 20 years while although the steel and glass skyscrapers would last longer, water damage and flooding would cause the streets to corrode and collapse.
Stone and brick buildings would remain standing the longest but after a few centuries they would also fall into ruin with motorways being the last remaining sign of human infrastructure but within 2,000 years even they would be gone and in a million years all evidence that we were here would be gone except some sculptures, plates and mugs which would be buried under sediment and mud and fossilised remains.  
As for the Earth, in our absence most other life would continue but the damage we have done to the Climate would take centuries to correct itself once temperatures stop increasing without more human emissions and life would last at least until our sun grows too hot to support it in billions of years from now.
The longest lasting sign that human's were even here would be the voyager spacecraft that has now left our solar system and carries evidence in the form of a golden record of human civilisation to possible distant alien worlds, barring a collision or a black hole of course.

Beware Scammers

I received a call from someone saying they were from HM Revenue & Customs stating that i owed £1000 in back taxes and the only way to stop my immediate arrest was to pay immediately so i played along and kept them waiting while i 'looked for my card' but was actually watching TV and after 30 mins i picked my phone back up and asked if they were still there, which they were, so laughed and hung up but many people do seem to fall for scams via phone, email or on Social Media.
TV is full of shows which expose scams like these but there were over a million reports to Action Fraud last year with millions of pounds in total lost to scammers so awareness is still not high enough but the Scammers are very good at what they do so said the guy at work who works on one of those shows.  
'They use a wide range of psychological tricks to confuse you and keep you off balance' he said and explained the main ones which many fall foul of.
They often impersonate people in authority such as government officials, police or expert professionals and our instinct is to obey authority figures and do as we’re told and another favourite is to pressure you into something by putting a time limit on it and provoking the fear of missing out in us because nobody wants to lose out on something we could otherwise have.
Knowing that immediately asking for a large amount can immediately raise suspicions, the scammer sometimes initiate contact with a small, easy request followed by a steady flow of additional requests because psychologically, once we have agreed to a small request you will agree as the requests get ramped up because once you’ve invested time into something, we are less willing to just walk away or end the interaction without a result.  
The opposite is beginning with a huge request that is easy to refuse and then they follow it up with a much smaller ask that seems reasonable in comparison.
Reciprocity is the key to the next one because when someone does something for us, we feel a indebted to return the favor and another is the hustle, where the scammer will actually let you make some real money from the which earns them your trust and once you actually make some small amount of profit, you’re more willing to risk increasing amounts because in your mind, you’ve already seen 'proof' that it’s legitimate.
The best rule of thumb then is it it seems to good to be true, it probably is

Trump 2.0

America has voted and in it's wisdom it has gone for Donald Trump 2.0 so credit for them for not letting him being a sex abusing racist with a criminal record and a long history of lying to them put them off and it would be amusing to see them slide into a dictatorship if it didn't potentially have such profound knock-on effects for the rest of the World.
Most pressing is his bewildering refusal to accept Climate Change which punished America so harshly recently so we can expect him to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord and undo Biden's environmental commitments which have been put in place to reverse or halt the climate crisis.
Every table top in the Kremlin must be straining under the weight of all that dancing on them because he is likely to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war which will be totally on Moscow's terms with Russia keeping the land it has taken and Israel will be given a free reign to commit all the genocide it likes in Palestine and give them the green light to clear the way for their settlers to push out the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and annex it as well as attack Iran and risk an even wider Middle Eastern war.
A failed businessman with five bankruptcies to his name, his economic plans appears to include tariffs on everyone with China due to be the recipient of the highest which experts are saying will cause considerable turmoil in the global economy and possibly hurt America more than those they are imposed upon.
Leaching his poison out of his countries borders is one thing and as for what he does in America i have no concern although a man described by dozens of people who worked with him previously as a fascist and without the 'grown ups' to reign him in this time, replaced by people more aligned to his agenda, it won't be good for them.
Already there is talk that his plans include removing fluoride from drinking water and appointing anti-vaccine advocate, Robert F Kennedy, to a role in his Administration and has said he open to the Kennedy plan of banning vaccines which he compared to 'Nazi rules'.
Half of American voters have opted for a man who refused to accept election defeat four years ago, used lies and dirty tricks to try and undermine its result and stood idly by while an angry mob ransacked the house of the American government so it isn't going to end well for America or possibly for him as there have been two assassination attempts on him already.
Still, it's their bed and it's them who have to lay in it but the rest of us we can only hope that his weirdness and lunacy doesn't ooze out too far beyond its borders.

A Rock And A Fascist Hard Place

Today is the American Election and 162 million Americans registered to vote will elect either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris to President or in their own words, that woman who is 'slow' and, 'low IQ' who changed her identity from Indian and 'became black' and the unhinged, unstable fascist guy.  
Usually, by election day voters have long since made their minds up and bewilderingly tens of millions will vote for a man increasingly compared to Hitler, the heir to Adolf if you will.
It could happen that America chooses faux-fascism and the erosion of it's civil and human rights which would splinter the cohesion of the country, its place in the world and its economy but there you go, it's their country and they can do whatever the hell they want with it but doesn't mean we can't all have an opinion on it as we would the elections in France, India, Japan or anywhere else.
Indeed, in my (admittedly irrelevant) view, come January America could have the nearest thing to a fascist as a president that they have ever had but even if he doesn't win, he will have come uncomfortably close to doing so despite their being every reason to believe that someone very much like him couldn't.
It is hard for some of us who aren’t American to understand why so many Americans are so enthused by Trump and what he stands for but they certainly know what they’re voting for from his last stint where almost everyone he worked with now despise and disown him, even warning that he should be the very last person anyone votes for.
They know he wants his generals to be more like Hitler’s, and to be loyal to him, that he is a draft dodger who dishonours veterans as 'suckers and losers', has 34 criminal convictions against him for fraud and are aware of his behaviour towards women as the Court Case which found him guilty of sexual assault attests to.
American women will suffer from further abortion bans, he will restrict the freedom of the media while abusing the judicial system to go after his enemies and will use the military against American citizens.
In Foreign policy he will let his friend in Israel finish the murderous and genocidal job in Gaza and inflict horrific wars in Lebanon and possibly Iran, continue to cuddle up to Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin and reignite a cold war on China and reverse any gains on Climate Change and take America back out of the Paris Climate Accord and whack tariffs onto imports but that's your choice Americans and if you are happy to accept all that, then good luck to you but your nations will be a very different place in 4 years time and the rest of the World won't wait for you, having no option but to write you off and put ourselves first also.
As for what Kamala offers, whatever it is it can't be worse than what her opponent is offering so it could be a choice between a rock and a hard place or to our overseas eyes, a rock and a wannabe fascist hard place but maybe you need to be outside looking in to see it, but if you don't then enjoy the company of your new friends in Pyongyang, Moscow, and Tel Aviv.  

Are You Gruntled?

The English language is a movable feast and i recently found out that the words 'gruntled', 'have ruth', 'feck' and 'gormful' are actual things meaning 'Happy', 'compassionate', 'effective' and 'enlightened' but their more pessimistic antonym's are more familiar as in disgruntled, ruthless, feckless and gormless.  
Back in the 17th Century you could feel 'respair' and have hope but now we seem to feel 'despair' and it's opposite has fallen out of the Dictionary.
There is an 'eucatastrophe' or a sudden and unexpected turn of events for the good which is the direct opposite of a catastrophe and 'eustress' is a situation with a benefit rather than a situation with a bad outcome which is distress.
Where i thought the words were examples of an unpaired word, they aren't and its just that the positive opposites have fallen away so we should bring them back again as we may feel a little more consolate and grunted.

Nothing To Gain Except Killing Your Brain

I have always been staunchly anti-drugs and have seen many, many lives wrecked and ended by them so it is depressing to read that deaths from drug use in England and Wales have risen by 11% according to the latest annual data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) with 5,448 fatalities in 2023 which is the highest number of drug-related deaths since records began in 1993.
Over half these deaths involved opiate misuse, such as heroin which accounted for the most deaths in the 40 to 49 age range.
The figures show that those born in the 1970s (Generation X) are more likely to die from drug misuse than any other age group and it is thought that the aging body is less able to handle the depressant effect on the body leading to a fatal overdose.
Men of any age outnumber women two-to-one in deaths from drug misuse as they always have since records began and men are more likely to use drugs than women and most deaths come from a single, fatal overdose.
Cocaine is the second-most used drug in England after cannabis and the ONS recorded the 12th consecutive rise in deaths due to the drug, 1,118 with deaths rising year-on-year which has been blamed on the purity of cocaine increasing which makes cocaine more potent.
Cannabis, which some countries are starting to legalise and is considered by some to be harmless, resulted in 32 deaths in 2023 and medical opinion is that cannabis comes with the risk of developing mental health issues and increases the risk of psychosis in some people and in 2023 a quarter of mental health cases were linked to cannabis use.
The UK government is funding research to explore reducing drug overdoses including wearable devices that would alert emergency services if an overdose is detected but the mdiea has a role to play as when a celebrity dies from drug abuse, their addiction is barely mentioned but it should be because it could drive home the message that taking drugs can be addictive and fatal, a lesson that needs repeating constantly.
We should highlight the pathetic way the famous die for their addiction, Whitney Houston and Matthew Perry drowning in their bathtubs, Prince slumped in an elevator, Michael Jackson and Tom Petty both alone in their beds, River Phoenix  and the ultimate in Elvis whose drug addled body was found dead on his toilet floor.
As one addict friend said to me as things spiraled away from him: 'When i could stop i didn’t want to and now that i want to stop, i can’t'.
He was found dead a few months later on Boxing Day having laid dead on his kitchen floor since Christmas Eve, tragically being unable to stop killed him.

Trump or Harris: Who Do Other Countries Prefer?

Many World leaders are keeping a diplomatic silence over who they want to win next weeks US Election out of the necessity of having to maintain a working relationship with whichever side takes power but some have subtly signaled their preferences.
Moscow and Vladimir Putin are obviously team Trump as they had a warm relationship during his first term and Trump has said that he would look for a quick resolution to the Ukraine conflict which is widely expected to be the withdrawal of arms to Ukraine which will force them to 'negotiate' and allow Russia to hold the swathes of East Ukraine they presently occupy as well as push for an end of sanctions that the US and others has imposed on Moscow since the invasion
Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orbán has said he will open: 'several bottles of champagne' if Donald Trump returns to the White House so safe to assume who he has his fingers cross for and in Israel Benjamin Netanyahu must feel buoyed by Trump saying that the Jewish state has never had a better friend in the White House than him and as Trump moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem which rode roughshod over the Palestinian's and international community who opposed the move, a Trump Presidency would allow Israel to do what it wants without consequences in Palestine.   
As for North Korea, a  high profile defector for the leaders inner circle told the BBC that Kim Jung Un views Trump as someone he can negotiate with over it's nuclear weapons program and in return the US lifting sanctions.
Officially China is staying silent but the BBC Foreign Correspondent has an interesting insight that within Xi's Government they are hoping for a Trump victory as they believe it would further erode the soft power of the US and in turn allow them to increase their own.
In India, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump four years ago as they saw him as a balance to China's growing power and as India has close links with Russia, and Trump is a keen fan of all things Putin, they would be a benefactor of a Trump 'friend of my friend' attitude.
As for for Europe, with the exception of Hungary, it’s Harris all the way with the UK leadership getting into a royal mess when it sent Party members to 'help' the Harris campaign but the EU see potential policies such as trade interrupted  and the Western backed war effort against Moscow at serious risk, especially as Trump campaigned against the US foreign aid package to Ukraine.
In a Yougov poll of why they wanted to win the US Presidency, it was a clean sweep for Harris with 81% going for her in Denmark, 73% in Sweden, 71% in Germany, 65% in Spain, 62% in France and 61% in Britain so no love for the Trumpian way in Europe.
As for the Middle East, the Democrats strong support for Israel during the Gaza war has generated widespread disapproval among Arab governments and communities but Trumps support for Israel only offers deeper resentment but although the Iranian administration is no fan, it is a little dirty secret that many Iranians believe he could topple the regime in Iran so are (quietly) keeping their fingers crossed for him.
Overall then most of the World are hoping it's Kamala Harris celebrating and Donald Trump trying to organise another storming of the Capitol Building and bleating about being cheated again.

Kemi Badenoch To Kemi Badenough

When amusingly James Cleverley done himself out of a place in the last two for Conservative leader to leave just the two very right wing contenders to battle it out in the leadership battle, a Party source said that Labour would be 'dancing on the tables' on the prospect of either of them becoming the official opposition, and so with the announcement that Kemi Badenoch is the winner, the tables of Labour supporters must be covered in footprints this morning because in Kemi, it's like turning up to an interview and seeing your only rival is wearing a tracksuit and has dribbled over their CV.   
Keir Starmer admirably kept a straight face when he said: 'I look forward to working with you and your party' and we all thought i bet you are because for journalists, the fact that the name 'Badenoch' turns into 'Badenough' with such little effort is a given but she is not what could charitably called 'a safe pair of hands'.
Only 42 of the 121 of her remaining Conservative colleagues voted for her in the Leadership campaign which means almost two thirds of them didn't want her in the first place because of her very right views views which include criticising maternity pay for mothers and  that 50,000 civil servants were so bad they should be jailed and 'not all cultures are equally valid' and made some strange link between people being free to marry who they want and men using women’s bathroom which must have made some sort of sense to her if nobody else.
In her first interview you said that the Partygate row was 'overblown' which immediately saw her condemned by almost everyone so thankfully the Conservative membership didn't learn from electing dullards such as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as their leader and have elected another one even further to the right who is to Politics what Harold Shipman was to the Medical Profession.
Nice one Tories because if nothing else, your efforts to support the table manufacturers of Britain is admirable.

Trump Looking More Orange Than Usual

When i saw Donald Trump do his rubbish truck stunt the other day the first thing i noticed was he looks a lot more Orange than usual but i assumed it was down to the contrast on the camera or even done in the editing (for some geeky reason American colour on TV is different to ours, NTSC v PAL whatever that means) but he was like an extreme Oompah Loompah on every channel and in the press so it must have been him overdoing the fake tan that morning.  
At work it was discussed and someone suggested it could be a psychological thing, like wearing a mask to hide behind which makes sense, the lying sex pest has a lot to be worried about, most pressing the fact that if he doesn't somehow win the Election next week and be able to quash the looming Court cases he could well be in the clink by next Christmas so we dug out some previous pictures of the twerp and its true, he does vary on just how much he overdoes the bottle tan.
Psychology Today states that wearing a mask (and makeup or fake tan is basically a mask to cover up your face) can change an individual's state by physically concealing and psychologically protecting themselves from others and when i asked the local Psychologist she said it was true that for most women (or overweight Presidents caught breaking the law and sexually abusing women): 'The more stressed, the more makeup' .
Looking through photo's and TV appearances and using a Paint Colour Palette, in July 2024 after the Biden debate Donald Trump was more of a Melon colour but this week he has gone Dark Amber.
When he took office in 2017, he was a Cider Colour but but as his term wore on the more tan was applied and by the time he urged his supporters to storm the Capitol building he had a distinct Clay hue to his skin and then when he was out of office and between court cases he was back to being Melon coloured.
Obviously now that he is back in the thick of things and facing a direct choice between being President and staying out of prison or not being President and doing time for an assortment of reasons, he has gone Rust coloured with the stress of it all or maybe despite all the bluster, he knows that the American's are not so stupid to vote for him, or rather not enough of them to let him back into power, so he is reaching for the industrial strength Nivea Self Tanner.  

Water Cycle Breaking Down

If you think back to your School science lessons you’ll probably remember the water cycle and words like evaporation and precipitation with arrows showing a circular motion and just how important it is to life on Earth as moisture get's moved around so would be pretty scary if that broke down, well guess what, it could very well be.
Scientists  at the Global Commission on the Economics of Water were tasked with assessing the state of Earth’s hydrological systems and the results are not encouraging as they found that demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by more than 40% by the end of the decade, mostly due to stresses caused by human activity and climate change and our Water cycle has started to break down.
Yep, another one of my scary Environmental posts i have been told scares people to which i say good, it should because  for the first time in human history, that system is breaking down due to our warming world which means more moisture in the atmosphere and less of it where it should be.
The 194-page report highlights  how every 1 degree Celsius increases moisture in the atmosphere which leads to increasing the power of hurricanes, typhoons, and other tropical storms and the regions most impacted by a looming water shortage will be northwestern Indian, northeastern China, and southern and eastern Europe.
They suggest we start to make plans now to transport water from areas with abundant supplies to those where the well is literally running dry and as no living thing can survive without water, it is life’s most precious necessity so for the survival of humanity, we can’t put out heads in the sands like we have done for the last 100 years with Climate Change where even extreme weather phenomenons like we have seen increasing over the last decade and has killed tens of thousands each year shamefully isn't enough for us to actually do something about it.

Religion Slowly Dying Out

All people are born Atheist and then taught to believe in some sort of Creator but you would need to go back thousands of years to try and work out how the ideas of religion began.
It is perfectly plausible that the first God's were invented by early man to help make sense of the inexplicable world around him they did not understand.
They would have seen a bright orb of light and heat in the sky and thought it must be a supernatural spirit watching over them.
When the Earth shook under their feet they thought obviously some mighty spirit living in the Earth must be stirring and why is that mountain spitting out liquid fire? Must be an angry spirit that needs to be appeased.
Over time, as man’s knowledge grew, those old spirits ran out of reasons to stick around but the idea of gods just took on different forms.
Countless gods, and at the last count there have been over 4,000 of them are known, have been lost to time as cultures and peoples died out, but the concept remained generally the same.
The Gods of today are just the latest incarnation of an archaic suggestion that has seen many gods rolled into on and imbued with even greater powers over people's lives and even into the afterlife which is either to be spent in paradise or in eternal damnation which has been used by innumerable leaders to try and control the masses.
Once the initial concept of god was created, all it required was for it to be handed down from parent to child, generation after generation, to be accepted as true and factual.
All God's are nothing more than a persistent idea which has been perpetrated and passed on to the next generation but the question is if you were not told all this and you were also not told of the science of how things work, how would you fill the gaps in your knowledge?
I assume you would go down the same route as the early humans but in the modern world we do have science, education and widely available and detailed explanations of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and the Sun so why are the mythologies of the past not dying out quicker than it is?
It may take many generations before religion is forgotten as future generations find religion to be an unimportant aspect of every day life despite the indoctrination of beliefs and the constant reinforcement from older generations but it means that the age of religion will slowly but surely come to and end as the number of indoctrinated children passing on their 'knowledge' grow fewer.

Thank You Dead People

The World can seem an awful place what with wars, economic crashes and global pandemics but who should we blame for it all?
Dead people of course because a lot of long-dead famous people actually caused such massive and negative changes in their lifetimes that we still feel the ill-effect of their existence today.
Obviously Adolf Hitler (died 1945) is a main player because the atrocities he committed with the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930 and 40's made a great impact society, there are neo-Nazi parties and supporters still now despite knowing how horrific as the Holocaust was and because of his Genocide, Israel came about and and now being accused of performed their own against the Palestinians.
Marcion of Sinope (died 160ad) gathered together stories from all other religions at the time, copy and pasted the name of Jesus and God into them and created the Bible which has been used by some to vilify, denounce, condemn and murder millions and continues still today.
Charles Darwin (died 1882) made groundbreaking work on evolution in 1859 but religious groups still today, despite all the evidence, continue to deny and debate it and in some American schools it has been pushed for creation science and not evolution to be taught in schools.
Henry VIII (died 1547)  is famous for many things but beheading wives didn't make their lasting impact of his decision to break away from the Catholic Church and set in motion the conflict Between Catholics And Protestants In Ireland which continues today.
James Madison (died 1836) was the the US President and his bright idea was to proposed and then write the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution back in 1791 and now America has more gun dealers than McDonald's & Starbucks combined and not by accident, the most mass gun shootings with 40,000 gun deaths each year.   
Dr. John Smith Pemberton (died 1888) gave the world Coca-Cola which also led to an increase in obesity, tooth loss and chronic illnesses related to sugar over consumption but the worst legacy from a  long dead person has to be Thomas Midgley Jnr who died in 1944 after leaving us not only with the decision to put lead in petrol but came up with the bright idea of CFC's for air conditioning and refrigeration systems which depleted the Ozone layer so badly that the World had to ban both his inventions and the Ozone layer, that thing which shields all living things from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation,
After 70 years of every car in the world using lead petrol which threw thousands of millions tonnes of lead into the atmosphere and then depleting the ozone layer with CFC's, the argument could be made that Thomas Midgely, through environmental changing actions, has been responsible for more human deaths than any other single person in history.

A New You Every Seven Years?

I once heard that your body replaces itself every seven years what with shedding skin, growing new hair and cells dying and being replaced but how true is it?
'That old chestnut' said the medical researcher i asked who then went on to explain that if it was true nobody would ever age which my mirror shows each morning is abundantly not true.  
According to research, the body has 30 trillion human cells and around 330 billion of those cells are replaced every day while other cells renew each week and some, such as our muscles, renew every 70 years while some such as the ones in our brain, heart and eyes are with us for our entire lives.
Stomach and intestines typically last only up to five days, skin cells  rejuvenate every two to four weeks, hair has a life span of about six years for women and three years for men, the Liver renews itself with new cells every 150 to 500 days and  the cells in our bones takes a full 10 years and slow down as we age.
Despite all this regeneration, the average age of all our cells is about seven years (hence the Old Wives Tale) and the sad truth is that we still get old and die because of mutations every time our cells renew so if you think you're going to look young and beautiful forever, you'll will have to find the Fountain of Youth.

Christmas Creep

Now that Halloween has passed and the strange mix of Santa and the Grim Reaper side by side on the shop shelves has gone it is full steam ahead to December 25th but along with cute snowmen and hearing Noddy Holder yelling that it's Christmas, so too are the Grinch-like grumbles that Christmas is getting earlier every year, and you know what, they are right, it is.
The autumn leaves may still be clinging on to trees but the Christmas music has begun already so we are being asked if you are hanging up your stocking on the wall and humming about chestnuts roasting on an open fire and rockin’ around the Christmas tree and the UK Top 40 singles show that the first Christmas songs in the charts last year entered 10 November when going back to 1967 when the UK charts began and through until 2004 Christmas songs only made an entry 2 weeks before the big day.
The first Mince Pies hit the Supermarket shelves 7 September , down from 9 September in 2023, and 28 September in 2020 and amusingly came with best before dates before December 25th.
Christmas markets are a fixture in cities and towns across the UK and the one in Birmingham opened its gates today, on the 1st November  and the Christmas light switch-on in Oxford Street 5th November which is 3 days later than last year so there may be hope for the miserable amongst us yet.
Personally, i'm with Wizzard and wish it could be Christmas Everyday and when i am supreme ruler of the World i will make it law that Christmas lights have to be on, Trees have to be up and Christmas songs have to be played all year round.