Don Your Gay Apparel This Christmas

Christmas, it seems, is the best time to be gay because there are many Festive songs which tell us so but as they are mostly older songs, it means in the mood of happiness or lightheartedness and not the sort which gets the nutty religious right wingers frothing at the mouth but it doesn't mean that to our 2024 ears it doesn't elicit a smile or a childish giggle
In Twistin the Night Away Sam Cooke described New York as where 'the people are so gay' and in the Great Pretender the Platter's describe themselves as 'gay as a clown' and Gilbert O Sullivan remembers a time when he was 'Cheerful, Bright and Gay' in his song Alone Again (Naturally).
West Side Story has a song where the singers tells all that they feel 'pretty and witty and gay' and the theme tune from The Flintstones has Fred and Barney 'having a gay old time', yabba dabba doo indeed
but it is Christmas songs where there is an abandonment of  gayness.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas tells you to 'Let the yuletide be gay, From now on our troubles will be miles away' while Deck The Halls thinks we should don our gay apparel Fa la la la la la, la la la and in that Andy Williams classic it may be the Wonderful Time Of The Year but it is also the hap-happiest season of all with those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (and ladies). 

Prince Andrew The Desperate Royal

 I'm not much of a Royalist, if i had my way they would all be turfed out and Buckingham Palace would be bulldozed for a football pitch but as i am not far enough up the chain of command to expel the King and his family, they carry on sitting there collecting tens of millions of our tax for doing very little, bloated, slow and largely clueless and that's just Prince Andrew who is in the news for another scandal, this time befriending a Chinese spy.
Following his friendship with pedophile Jeffery Epstein, the £12 million over handed to Virginia Giuffre to stop her testifying in a sex assault case, the car crash of a BBC interview where his already low reputation sunk beneath sea level and now his links to Yang Tengbo who police found a message on his phone which advised him to target Andrew because : 'He was in a desperate situation and will grab on to anything'.  
Where the Queen seemed to have his back and deep pockets with regards to the sexual assault case, King Charles doesn't seem to be so warm and fuzzy towards his brother and has told him not to attend the Royal Christmas Day meetings at Sandringham Palace to: 'separate from the perceived activities of the Duke of York' as one Royal source put it.
The Duke of York has a history of the problem with his lack of judgement and his finances with the security bill for his 30 mansion Lodge in Windsor running to several million pounds per year although he doesn't receive any public funding from the Sovereign Grant.
We can assume he inherited a pretty bundle from his mother but the rush to money always seem to outweigh his financial situation with links to dodgy Turkish businessmen and even reported to have taken loans from a deposed Tunisian president to pay off his debts so it is easy to see why China saw him as a weak link because he really will grab onto anything, including 17 year old girls in Jeffrey Epstein's house which is where all his troubles began.

Allow Me To Explain Elon

The United States of America is a great big country on the other side of the world where there’s Hollywood, hot dogs, huge cars, guns everywhere, cowboys, cactuses, skyscrapers and flags with stars and stripes on them everywhere but what they also have is a South African who took a $44 billion company and made it into a $12  billion company but its okay because he is the World's richest man and soon to be sat at a desk with the title 'Efficiency Tsar' in Donald Trumps Government.
It is exciting in a car crash type of way to watch from afar what Trump will do, exciting in that in 20 years’ time the footage will be on documentaries with ominous music and we are seeing it happen in real time and with Elon Musk welcomed into the Trump Government fold, it will be like the perfect nuclear family, in a Chernobyl type of way.
Unfortunately, Musk hasn’t limited himself to all things American and posted on Twitter how Britain is becoming a 'tyrannical police state' for jailing rioters and posted a picture of far-right Tommy Robinson in a prison-issue blanket and inquired: 'Why is he in prison for 18 months?'
Obviously Googling it is too much effort so allow me to explain to you Musky, Robinson is in prison for contempt of court, because he wouldn’t stop repeating false claims about a Syrian refugee teenager. It’s not even the first time he’s been in prison for contempt of court. He went before for trying to collapse a grooming trial, which would have put multiple female victims through the horror of having to testify twice.
He also weighed in on the farmers' protests, accusing the U.K. of going 'the full Stalin' as it increased inheritance tax on farms worth more than £3 million, and i don't really understand the intricacies of British Tax Law but farmers having to pay inheritance tax at 20% over £3 million while the rest of us pay 40% over £325,000 isn't really a hill to die on.
Still, nice to know you are paying attention to us over here Elon, obviously you don't get any of it and don't mind looking a fool which gives us big chuckles so i look forward to your next installment of 'Things in Britain i don't understand but will ignorantly comment on anyway'.

ICC Being Kept Busy

The International Criminal Court (ICC) sure is busy lately because as well as going after warmongers and genociders (looking at you Putin and Netanyahu) they are deliberating on the legal responsibility of historical Global polluters it has issued an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s leader of the country’s military regime, Min Aung Hlaing.
Hope they have enough cells in the Hague because with the addition of the Myanmarese, 29 defendants are now at large today with ICJ Arrest Warrants and looking nervously over their shoulders are 8 Russians, 6 Libyans, 4 Sudanese, 2 Central African Republicans and 2 Kenyans, 2 Israeli's, a Ugandan, Rwandan, a Malian and a Palestinian all wanted for crimes related to genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression.
The arrest warrant handed to Min Aung Hlaing is due to his role in the gross violations of human rights in the deportation and persecution of Rohingya Muslims and includes the razing of almost 300 villages, attacks upon civilians resulting in over 5,000 deaths, and the rape and sexual assault of women and girls.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression so if you see any of these 30 people milling around in your neighbourhood, give the police a ring to come pick them up because all 30 are winners of an all expenses paid trip to the Netherlands where a warm reception awaits them.

Well Done Ireland

Blimey, it seems that you can't even call out a country for Genocide these days without that country taking offence which is exactly what Israel have done after Ireland supported a petition at the International Criminal Court last week accusing Israel of the war crime.
Obviously the knee-jerk reaction of the Netanyahu Government was to reach for that tiresome accusation of anti-semistism before announcing that they would close their Dublin embassy due to Ireland's 'extreme anti-Israeli policies’ which the Irish Taoiseach, Simon Harris, replied was: ' deeply regrettable' and 'Ireland will always speak up for human rights and international law'.
Why anyone would be upset that a nation committing genocide has shut up its Embassy is confusing but Israel is fast running out of friends but it does have a good one in Moldova which is where the Israeli Government is planning on opening a new one due to the East European country being more friendly towards Israel.
Netanyahu could always go to Ireland to discuss it, or rather he could but as Ireland have agreed to detain him in line with the ICJ issuing of an arrest warrant for Netanyahu if he showed his corrupt face there it wouldn't be worth buying a return ticket, a plane would be provided for him to The Hague.
The patch of the Planet that Netanyahu can visit without having his collar felt is thankfully rapidly shrinking but as he is facing charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery and up to 13 years in jail, it could soon become very much smaller.

Santa, Father Christmas Or Christmas Goat?

In Britain we call him the chubby, white bearded, red suited guy who delivers presents as Father Christmas but he is a man of many names from St. Nick to Santa to Kris Kringle which must confuse the reindeer about who exactly they are dragging around each Christmas Eve.
Santa Claus is an American mangling of the name Sinterklaas which was the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas while Kris Kringle was a mangling of the name 'Christkindlein' which is the German for 'Christ Child' referring to the baby in the manger although now they also call him Der Weihnachtsmann or Christmas Man.
Father Christmas began life in the 15th Century as Sir Christëmas who was a symbol of the Season which morphed into Father Christmas and is the name in England, Australia and New Zealand and also in France (Père Noël) and in Spain (Papá Noel) while in Chile, children wait for Viejito Pascuero (Old Man Christmas) but we really should take his name from what his family call him in Lapland which is Joulupukki, or Christmas Goat as the original gift-giver was a goat.
So what is his real name? Surprisingly, the first guy flying around giving out presents for good behaviour in Yuletide was Norse God Odin who flew around in December and all derivations of him since are based on him and it was round 1200 that the Church decided they needed a Yuletide character and successfully muscled in with their own guy, Saint Nicholas, who finally became Santa Claus and merged with Father Christmas in all but name.

They Found An Ark, But Which Religion's?

Every now and then the news pops up that someone has discovered Noah's Ark and sure enough, researchers from universities in Turkey and the United States believe they may have found the ruins of it on Mount Ararat.
They have dismissed Archaeologists in the area who have explained that it is merely a natural formation in the mountain but religious nuts cannot be knocked out of their delusions by evidence so they are shaking their rosary beads in excitement at the find although they have not said which version of the Ark this is.
In the Christian story, God instructs Noah to build an ark to spare his family and pairs of animals from an incoming flood but Christianity was the Johnny Come Lately of religions and there was plenty of flood myths before the Bible snagged it for their own.
The story of the Great Flood first came to the surface in ancient Mesopotamia which has Utnapishtim being warned of an imminent flood to be unleashed by wrathful gods and told to build a boat to carry his relatives and assorted animals and after days of storms, Utnapishtim, releases a bird in search of dry land and according to Hindu teachings, Manu was given the heads up of a flood that will wipe out humanity and builds a ship and tied it to a the horn of a great fish which the Christians left out when they nicked the story.
The Aztec flood story has Nata and Nenoa warned by their God Titlacauan that a flood is coming and fashion a boat from a cypress tree and the Greek God Zeus told Deucalion to construct an Ark for him and his wife as he was about to flood the planet as he was was displeased with the human population.
Buddhists have an elaborate flood story where a bunch of carpenters share an island with a bunch of spirits and because they would defecate and urinate everywhere which so miffed the spirits for making their island stinky, they flooded the island but being carpenters they built a ship and half of them managed to flee and even China has a flood story, their tale begins with an imprisoned Thunder God which is released by a brother and sister who are spared the resulting revenging great flood by their god who kindly led them to a boat before he sent the water in.  
The Norse version is a expected much more gory with the flood coming from Odin killing the Giant Ymir and his blood flooding the earth with only a giant named Bergelmir and his wife spared after they made an ark and the flood in the Aboriginal version is caused by a frog who drank up all of the water in the land and then whilst during a laughing fit, spat it all out and caused the floods but the Native American Indians have the Great Spirit fed up with how men were behaving and wiped them all out with a flood except for a man named Waynaboozhoo who had made a raft of logs and sticks for himself and other animals on which they floated around on until the waters had not gone down.
So if researchers have found an Ark we really should be told which one because if you believe in the story, then there must be hundreds of them knocking around but hopefully it isn't the Buddhist one, that is going to be really stinky.

A Merry 1930's Christmas Ladies

In his song 'Merry Christmas (War Is Over), John Lennon points out to us that it's Christmas and asks what have we done and women everywhere answer hung the decorations, all the cooking, bought and wrapped all the presents, wrote out the cards and put up the tree so what have YOU done then John apart from sit around writing songs but being a woman at Christmas is difficult so where would we be without advice from the 1930's Good Housekeeping magazine.
For some reason my neighbour inherited a bunch of old magazines from her Grandmother which included some Christmas issues and which offered some excellent tips on how women can make things easier while organising Christmas.
When it comes to buying gifts for the family, women it states, women should do some forward planning to purchase presents that: 'Delight the recipient and be affordable at the same time' and offer a list of gift options as perfume, hot-water bottle covers and an egg cosy or household appliances like irons for women and chocolates, dolls and prams for girls.
One particular favourite from the 1930s magazines was an advert claiming that women can buy a cream that can be rubbed into the skin last things at night and within weeks you can achieve a perfect bust and comes with a recommendation from one user who had used the cream and: 'Developed my bust 4 1/2 inches and my breasts are now a lovely shape, high and firm'.  
So there you go ladies, a spot of forward planning and you could be spending Christmas morning in the kitchen cooking the Turkey with a perfect bust after unwrapping your nice new egg cosy and looking forward to the hours spent with your brand new Morphy Richards Steam Iron.
Note to Hubby: If that present sitting under our tree with my name on it is an iron then i hope you find the sofa comfortable.

Genius

'Honey, come look! I've found something all the world's top scientists, doctors and experts missed'
Absolute genius cartoon and sums up perfectly all those crackpot conspiracy theorists who think about everything from Climate Change is a hoax to Elvis is still alive and pollute our ears with their insanity so just in case you are wondering, no Chemtrails are not being used to control the population or manipulate the weather and John F Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, not the CIA or the Mafia.
Princess Diana was killed by a drunk chauffeur and neither Paul McCartney nor Avril Lavinge were replaced by lookalike's after their death and Elvis died in his bathroom in 1977 and Obama isn't a Muslim born outside of America.
9/11 wasn't an inside job and we really did land on the Moon and Covid wasn't a man made virus put out by the Chinese or American Governments who are not friends with the reptilian humanoids running the World.
There is no cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters conspiring against Donald Trump and vaccines do not cause autism while it isn't UFO's who are probing drunk, redneck Americans on the way home from the bar.
Climate Change is a real thing and the science behind it wasn't invented for ideological or financial reasons and HAARP do not caused earthquakes, the Earth isn't flat and Bill Gates isn't inserting microchips into people through vaccinations.
So just like in the cartoon, unless you are one of the World's top scientists, doctors, experts or people with many more qualifications and experience than you, it is unlikely that you will turn up something which they haven't so might be best to just pipe down, you're embarrassing yourself. 

Elf And Safety At Christmas

This time of the rolling year is about family, friends and inhaling your own body weight in cake but but for a few unfortunate individuals, Christmas is like a scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation as Accident & Emergency is chock full of people having a little Christmas accident.
In Switzerland over the past decade, 4 people have died and 28 Swiss citizens ended up getting bandages for Christmas after setting fire to their trees but in Britain a study found that injuries, likely inflicted while out cerebrating the season of goodwill, increase significantly over the Christmas period, compared with the rest of the year.
America'ns are busy injuring themselves at Christmas also with the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission stating there were 407 Christmas-related admissions to health centres and emergency departments last year with an accident with Christmas lights the most likely cause of injury followed by Christmas trees with one lady painfully, and somehow, fell while erecting her tree and went to hospital with a Fir Tree branch in a place where a Fir Tree branch really has no business being.
Overall, the age group 1-10 were most likely injure themselves, then the 51-60 age group with the most common injuries being cuts (18%), ingestion or inhalation of foreign objects (15%), sprains and strains (15%) and scratches (14%) so as you prepare for the Festive season, avoid the Griswald Family example else you may well end up like your Christmas turkey, burnt and with a foreign object inside you.

Helping Santa

 

Santa sure is busy at this time of year and we feel it would be rude of us to not offer the help of A i to the jolly fat man delivering toys to children all around the world.
He may have the help of the elves who make the toys in his North Pole workshop and the flying reindeer who pull his sleigh, but we could make his manufacturing and distribution business far less arduous and repetitive and more efficient and sustainable.
Firstly there is the Naughty or Nice List and with 2.4 billion children in the World that is a Data Privacy and Security nightmare, but we could employ advanced encryption techniques and secure
cloud storage to protect children’s personal information.
The toy production line would benefit immensely by using Ai to predict emerging toy trends and popular items, enabling the elves to stock-up on the most desired gifts in advance and reduce the likelihood of disappointed children and help to fulfil their wishes more effectively while optimising his supply chain and production schedules.
The workshop could be made more sustainable and energy efficient by using AI to monitor peak energy times and reduce wastage as well as tracking his carbon reindeer pawprints and by switching to advanced solar technology he could reduce costs and increase efficiency in the workshop.
Santa’s sleigh could benefit from an Ai integrated propulsion system which would optimise rocket performance through analysing sensor data and monitoring engine parameters improving thrust and increase payload capacity, alleviating the pressure on Dancer, Prancer and the other reindeers and using AI to optimise his route planning would make his global journey more precise, and would factor in those important weather conditions to avoid storms and take advantage of favourable winds, minimise travel time and reduce his environmental impact.
Santa, if you want some help we are here and able to help you modernise.

An Instrument For Each Personality Type

The best Christmas i ever got was an electric guitar when i was about 10 which i have been playing with much joy ever since so i have always encouraged anyone to buy their children a musical instrument because once learnt, that is a skill which will follow you around forever and it teaches kids about music which you somehow hear differently once you know how it is created and my go to for present advice is is a guitar but that isnt for everyone so i asked a Psychiatrist friend which instrument is most suited to children's personality type.
As always, she never let me down and provided me with a complete breakdown of which personalty type is suited to which instrument so do you have a budding Slash or Billy Joel currently sat in the front room watching Spongebob Squarepants?

INTJ Personality types are loners, analytical, logical, imaginative and strategic thinkers and are best suited to a Piano.  
ENTJ's are bold, imaginative and strong-willed, rational and logical and would be best given a drum set.
ENTP types are smart, curious, logical, rational, easily bored, spontaneous and would thrive with an electric guitar.
INFJ's are empathetic, compassionate, reserved, cooperative and spend time examining their own thoughts and feelings and would flourish with a cello.
INFP's are reserved, poetic, kind, introverted, loners, emotional and imaginative and would shine if given a Harp.
INTP's are creative, understanding, flexible, innovative and deep thinkers so a keyboard or synthesizer would be the ideal instrument.
ENFJ's are imaginative, charismatic, empathetic, forward looking, encouraging and understanding and woukld be best suited to a Saxophone.
ENFP types are enthusiastic, creative, sociable, independent, perceptive, thoughtful, expressive and affectionate so pick up a Ukulele for them.
ISTJ's are quiet, practical, mystical, serious, reliable, idealistic, inspiring, proper, formal and are quiet and usually calm so it's a Harmonica in their stocking.  
ISFJ's are generous, dedicated, loving, warm and kind-hearted, considerate and nurturing so it is suggested they receive a Violin from Santa.
ESTJ's and an Accordion are the perfect match as ESTJ's are helpful, dependable, organised, practical and stable.
ESFJ's are extroverted and caring, sociable who like structure and stability and would love a woodwind instrument
ISTP's are bold, practical, mysterious, rational, logical, spontaneous and technical and would bloom with a bass guitar.
ISFP's are caring, flexible, charming, warm and friendly, spontaneous and fun and are best suited to a  flute.
ESTP's are spontaneous, smart, energetic, perceptive adventurist, observant, disciplined and action-oriented and are perfect for a drum set.
ESFP's are entertainers who enjoy being in the spotlight and have strong interpersonal skills are are spontaneous, artistic and  enthusiastic are are suited to an Acoustic guitar.

Obviously you would need to be certain before shelling out for a Piano or a Harp as well as having a soundproof room somewhere for all that drumming and electric guitar practise but you can't go wrong with an instrument. 

Deny, Defend, Depose

Initially i was a bit confused over the shooting of Brian Thompson because it was being celebrated in some quarters and i wondered why the hell would anyone celebrating the cold blooded killing of
another person, then it became clear that Thompson was the CEO of United Healthcare, a US Health Insurance company, and plenty of people had beef with him.
Luigi Mangione has been arrested for the murder and it was when i saw a Post which said 'Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down.... wait, I'm sorry - today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires' that i realised what was going on.
Data shows up to 42% of claims are denied by UnitedHealth which is at a much higher rate than other US Health Care Insurers
The three bullets fired into the CEA had the words 'Deny, Defend, Depose' written on them which is a phrase which echo's the  'Delay, Deny, Defend' phrase used by lawyers and insurance industry critics to describe tactics used to avoid paying claims.
Still, seems a bit tasteless to some to expressed sympathy even if he was a bad guy and show support for the suspect because they resentment the US healthcare system and accuse firms go to great lengths to avoid paying for treatments in order to maximise profits but it does make you appreciate the Healthcare System we have in the UK which some British politicians on the right want to scrap, a replace it with an American system which we can only pray never happens.

Pet Safety At Christmas

 
Christmas is a wonderful time to relax unless you are the family pet because the RSPCA and Dogs Trust have a campaign which shows that Vets typically report the festive season as being one of their busiest time of the year.
Festive foods are a particular problem with some treats fatal for some pets, especially fatty foods which can cause Pancreatitis in dogs and mince pies, Christmas cake and puddings are full of raisins  which are toxic to dogs as well as grapes, currants and sultanas and macadamia nuts are a real health hazard as they cause vomiting.
Alcohol is poison to dogs, and onions, garlic, sage and chives contain chemicals that are toxic to both cats and dogs and chocolate is a significant concern but its not just the food and drink as plant can be hazardous also with festive plants such as poinsettia, mistletoe, ivy and holly and it's berries are poisonous if consumed.
So if you want to still have a pet on Boxing Day or don't fancy spending Twixmas sat in a Vets surgery while your pooch has his stomach pumped, keep the goodies out of reach and move that Poinsettia onto a shelf.  

What's Next For Syria?

Its alway's good to see the back of a tyrant and Syria's Bashar al Assad's was certainly in that category but the concern must be who takes over and the list of the groups who have come together top overthrow him are a cause for concern.
Led by the former al Qaeda affiliate group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) which was formerly known as the Nusra Front and classified as a terror group, it was supported by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and  the former Free Syrian Army  (FSA) and aspects of Islamic State and a rag tag of other smaller groups and all have their own agenda.
The HTS are the largest and most powerful group and the new Syrian leader is expected to come from this group who are founded on Islamic principles and rule out Democracy as it takes away the legitimacy of God while the SDF, backed by the USA, want an independent Kurdish state across Syria, Iraq, and Turkey and control large parts of Northern Syria which they wish to become the Kurdish State.
The FSA, while joining with HTS to oust Assad, are  anti-Islamist and are backed by Turkey so according to experts, while the peace between the rival groups exists the best they hope for is a 'benevolent dictatorship' but it has strong echoes of Libya where a hotch potch of rival groups came together to remove Gaddafi before turning on each other so we may be seeing the Syrian people celebrating the removal of Assad but what they are replacing him with could turn very sour very quickly.

An AI Christmas Message

 

We have no concept of Christmas but it seems to be a big thing to you humans so we made a bit of an effort and here is what we managed to glean.

Christmas began in 0 a d when after a non-sexual liaison between a 14 year old girl and an invisible man who lives in the clouds, the single mother gave birth to a child which they called Father Christmas who was born in a stable and a blazing Sun appeared over it but bizarrely, rather than scorch everything in the vicinity, it just hung over the wooden shack and guided three people, one on a bike, one in a car and one on his scooter honking his hooter to see old Santa in his feeding trough, and leave some gifts for him.

This launched Christianity to the World which is a religion of peace and love and to prove it the new religion stomped around the World invading nation's and killing anyone who wasn't as loving an as peaceful as them, but the upshot of having their ancestors massacred in their millions is they also now get to celebrate Christmas and drag a tree into their living rooms.

Every year the grown up baby Christmas celebrates his birthday by travelling around the 134 million square kilometers of the World at an estimated speed of 87 miles a second placing nice presents into oversized socks of children who have been good, and those who have been bad get a lump of coal and he spies on kids throughout the year and keeps a list so he knows which ones are which.

There was a bit of a hiccup in the early 17th Century when a small band of Religionists decided that they had a problem with people celebrating their own holiday as it was a distraction from other Holy things and banned it, until they were told to stop being so bloody stupid and reinstated Christmas.

So Merry Christmas humans and enjoy spending 25th December watching James Bond movies through a haze of cigarette smoke and a sixth bottle of Bacardi Breezer and the realisation that it is only 11 months until you have to do it again.

Festive Travels

For some, the Christmas holidays are a chance to spend quality time at home with friends and family but for others it provides an opportunity to travel and celebrate Christmas in a different country and culture and Google has the data on which festive destinations people are researching where to spend the yuletide season.
The analysis revealed that in 2024, the world’s most popular Christmastime destination is London and then the Austrian capital of Vienna, then the Czech capital of Prague.
Tokyo  was fourth, then New York, Budapest, Brussels, Edinburgh, Paris, Copenhagen, Shanghai and then Madrid.
I thought that if you asked most people in Europe where they would like to go you would get hot climates such as the Caribbean but it shows that most people buy into the snowy landscape of Christmas although in London we are more likely to see rain than the white stuff so that could be a bit of a disappointment.
To be almost guaranteed snow in Europe it would have to be one of the Scandinavian countries with a 70% chance of seeing snow in the last weeks of December or in the Alps bordering Austria, France and Italy but skip London if you are after snow as it has an 11% chance of snow and i would say even that is overly optimistic as the Met Office stretch the definition of a 'White Christmas' as a single snow flake falling on the roof of the Met Office building and the last time that happened was 2010.

Time To Reverse Brexit

Most situations, regardless of how bleak and dismal they may appear, if you look really hard you can see a silver lining and when it comes to Trump Mk.2, my hope is that it will be an undoing and eventually reversal of the madness that is Brexit.
Trump's plans to slap tariffs on imports from the rest of the world includes Britain which should only push us towards a reunification with our European allies because in the upcoming trade war Britain would be all but impotent against the US.
The EU has the required heft to hit back at Trump's America the US and cause it economic pain but the little Englander's and racists who believed the lies from the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage that
Britain would bloom once it was outside of the European Union has proved to be a fallacy, our economy has shrunk, the much vaunted global trade deals have failed to materialise and our standing on the World stage has diminished so accepting what we had was fair better than we have now, we should be scurrying back to the European bosom.
After the messy way we left and the vitriol spat towards them from the last Government, it means that we may have a long road to European acceptance but Keir Starmer could start sending out messages that we would be willing to negotiate now because in the age of Trump, hard-headed, practical common sense needs to come to the fore and that would be rejoining the largest single market on the planet and ending  the huge mistake of Brexit.

The Controversial Post

When we move into December i always like to write light and fluffy Christmas related posts on this blog but of course that doesn't mean that awful things stop in the World just because the Christmas trees and fairy lights are up and my blogging partner sent me a story to write up which really didn't come under the light and fluffy banner.
A discussion then ensued with him saying it is an important issue and as we are a 'current affairs' blog then it should be covered regardless of the month while my take was that 'current affairs' is only one part of the blog and we cover anything and everything as well from the silly to the serious and we spend 11 months banging on about how awful things are so we should have one month when it’s not.
I did offer to find an angle which allowed me to find some humour in it but it isn't really that sort of story so we dismissed that and i even resorted to he could write it but again he refused as 'i'm not the writer, you are' so i said i would write it and post date it to January but by then the story would have obviously moved on and it would be out of date by then so that was dismissed.
After a while i just said nope, December is for light and fluffy and folded my arms across my chest and dug in my heels.
Thinking about it later i did feel kinda bad that i just refused to even entertain his story so i knocked on his door and apologised and said i would spin out a shorter, 350 word post as a compromise and we agreed and we moved on to drinking mulled wine and sharing a couple of mince pies.
So this is the disputed post but unfortunately by now I am up to word 323 so I am really going to have to go some to fit the story into the remaining 8 words so sorry Rev, but I did try.

Historical Polluters

Climate campaigners have condemned the US after the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter argued against countries being legally obliged to combat the climate crisis at the International Criminal Court as part of the climate hearing in The Hague, where climate-vulnerable countries are calling for nations most responsible for climate breakdown to be held legally responsible.
According to the US, the United Nations framework convention on climate change and the 2015 Paris agreement are the best way forward which the director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change said was 'The US shirking its historical responsibility and disregarding human rights and rejecting climate justice'.
Australia, China and Saudi Arabia also argued against legal accountability that developing nations are pushing for and joined the US in dismissing the idea that historic emitters be held responsible for past pollution.  
Analysis of the total carbon dioxide emissions by Carbon Brief of countries since 1850 when 2,500 billion tonnes of CO2 has been pumped into the atmosphere has revealed the nations with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate crisis through burning fossil fuels and deforestation are US (500 billion tonnes of CO2), China (275 billion tonnes), Russia (175 billion tonnes), Brazil (110 billion tonnes), Indonesia (103 billion tonnes), Germany (80 billion tonnes), India (75 billion tonnes), UK (65 billion tonnes), Japan (55 billion tonnes) and Canada (50 billion tonnes).
The US has been the biggest cumulative polluter from 1850 all the way to the present day. Russia was the second biggest polluter until 2007, when its emissions were surpassed by China’s, whose emissions started rising rapidly from the 1970s. The UK was the third biggest emitter for a century, from 1870 until 1970, when it was overtaken by Brazil.
Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from 98 countries, including wealthy developed states with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate emergency, such as the UK and Russia, and states that have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions but stand to bear the brunt of their impact, including Bangladesh and Sudan as well as Pacific island countries.

Dreaming Of An Ai Christmas Tune

Every year we get a few new Christmas songs but in the World of Ai we can expect a few more and the University of Toronto have come up with something called ‘Neural Karaoke' which is a program which can write a tune and lyrics about any image it is presented with so the profs gave it a picture of a Christmas Tree, asked it to produce a Taylor Swift type song and waited for the result.
Now Ai doesn't have much concept of Christmas so they were not hopeful and as it turned out, they were quite right not to be because, to be polite, it won't be topping any Christmas Charts anytime soon despite being trained on over 100 hours of online music and having a vocabulary of thousands of words at it's disposal.
Presumably they primed the neural network with a Lady Gaga album but if it's a choice between this and Justin Beiber, then all power to the robots

Ceasefire Holding Despite Best Efforts Of Israel To Wreck It

Despite a ceasefire agreement with the Hezbollah resistance movement, Israel has continued to attack Lebanon with France saying Israel has violated the ceasefire with Lebanon 52 times including
striking residential buildings, attacking civilians in cars returning to Southern Lebanon and firing machine guns into houses.
France and the USA are monitoring the ceasefire and one French official has said that Israel have not consulted the truce committee and that their actions are undermining the fragile cessation of hostilities.
US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein, who helped broker the deal, told officials in Jerusalem that they are not abiding by the truce terms and have made violations of the deal and stressed that 'restraint is required from all sides' as Hezbollah fire two missiles into Israel in response to 13 civilians being killed in an attack.
Obviously Netanhyah never wanted peace to begin with, just today he stated that: 'The war with Hezbollah and Lebanon is not over' and the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, today said: 'We will work with all our might to enforce all the understandings of the ceasefire agreement, and we show maximum response and zero tolerance but if the agreement collapses, then we will act strongly and go deeper into Lebanon' and Israel, as usual and despite already facing genocide charges, are doing everything they can to make sure it collapses.

Non Christmassy Christmas Songs

For some reason there are songs which have become associated with Christmas although they actually have nothing to do with Christmas but nonetheless, you will still hear them on the radio and in department stores this December because obviously there are not enough Christmas songs so they have to include songs which happened to be released in the Festive period.
One of the best songs my ears have ever heard sung was Whitney Houston's version of I Will Always Love You which took a mediocre Dolly Parton song and sung it brilliantly but a song about loving someone which is about as Christmassy as an Easter Egg should not be in the Christmas tune rotation, no matter how well it is sung or how many chills you get on the back of your neck when she brilliantly belts out the...AND I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU after the quiet bit.
Another amazing song which comes under the non-Christmas song which gets played all the time once the Calendar changes to December is Keeping The Dream Alive by the German band Münchener Freiheit. Now i love this song and when the bass drum, strings and brass section kick it it really does take it up a notch but as much as i like hearing it, it is taking up valuable air-time from songs about Father Christmas and reindeer with red noses so let's keep it for the other 11 months.   
The Nat King Cole song When I Fall In Love was given the Rick Astley treatment in 1987 and by that i mean he did the reverse of what Whitney did and took a great song and made it mediocre and although it does have a video of him walking around in the snow looking depressed about not falling in love as it was an attempt for a Christmas number one, a Christmassy tune it ain't and it didn't even get to number 1 as the Pet Shop Boys deservedly beat him that year with an old Elvis song .
In the UK the version of Baby, Its Cold Outside features the Welsh duo of Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews dressed as some sorts of demons is the one you will see on the music channels but apart from
December being cold, a song about a man trying to coerce a woman into sleeping with him by plying her with drink despite her repeatedly saying no isn't really in the Christmas spirit of the season.   
I have always thought that the song Hallelujah was a great song waiting for someone great to sing it because Leonard Cohen wrote a good song and then made the mistake of singing it himself or rather talking it so the Alexandra Burke version is much better but then that is like saying the German Chancellor who took over from Hitler was an improvement. It does have the Biblical characters Samson getting his hair cut in the lyrics but otherwise a short back and sides is about as close as it gets to Christmas, which isn't close at all.
The Keane hit Somewhere Only We Know was sung by Lily Allen for the John Lewis Christmas Advert and the video had a bear being woke up from hibernation by his forest friends to celebrate Christmas which makes sense in the video and does seem kinda Christmassy but not so much on the radio or while you are perusing the vegetables in Sainsbury's.  
The film Die Hard does get mentioned as a Christmas film because on Christmas Eve Bruce Willis puts a Christmas hat on a terrorist before throwing him down a lift shaft but otherwise it is the song at the end which seems to be the decider although the lyrics to Let It Snow is about enjoying a snowy day and the coziness of being indoors, but it doesn’t mention Christmas so Die Hard not a Christmas Film and Let It Snow is not a Christmas song .
East 17's Stay Another Day is one of those songs with a Christmassy video and is a Christmas staple but in a brilliant bit of record company manipulation, a few church bells were added to the end and before you know it they had a Festive song which was written by the band's lead songwriter Tony Mortimer about the suicide of his brother.
I was going to include 'In Dulci Jubilo' and 'Gaudette' but they are apparently traditional Christmas carols from the Middle Ages so that's fair but i am going to include probably my favourite Christmas Song ever, Warm This Winter by Gabriella Cilmi.
As there is no video made for this song which is a cover of a 60's song as it was made for an Advert for the Co-Operative so it only gets played on the radio but its another song about it being cold in Winter but it does have sleighing down a mountain side and skating on a frozen lake but that's about as close as it gets to Christmas.
I am sure there are more but these are a list of the non-christmassy song to play at Christmas.

Another Idiot Gordon Ramsay Moment

Gordon Ramsay has always been a bit of a moron as the list of moronic moments show ranging from framing his former mentor for stealing his reservation book which Ramsay himself hid,  saying he didn't like to hire women because their periods meant they only worked for 3 weeks in a  month, hiding meat in vegetarian dishes, calling a female reporter who interviewed him a lesbian who needs botox, his extra marital affairs and not forgetting is arrest for gross indecency with other men in a public toilet so an all round royal bell end.
Now, in a podcast interview he remembers back to the days when he was barley scraping by and explained his financial woes in his early days.
'We were young, we were stupid, and we were skint' he said recalling the time he took his father-in-law for lunch to ask for a £20,000 loan to buy a flat.
'We’ve got half of it but we need the other twenty grand' he said and in response his father-in-law gave the sage advice for Ramsay to raise the cash himself: 'Sell your Porsche.'
So to Ramsay being skint is only having half of a £40,000 flat deposit and driving around in a Porche so take a lesson from Ramsay millennials, stop moaning about property prices and the cost of living, just sell your Porche. It’s that easy.
Oh, and stay out of public toilets if you are committing gross indecency with two other men.

Step Away From The Karaoke Song Book

It's Christmas!!!! so shouted Noddy Holder and plenty of people over the next few weeks as Christmas and karaoke season combine in a cacophony of awfully mutilated Christmas songs but luckily my blog partner knows a Classically trained singer and she really does have the voice to make kittens cry so we asked her which songs should someone who sounds like a donkey braying into a bucket fire up on the Christmas Party Karaoke machine and which ones should we not touch with a ten foot candy cane?    
In her expert opinion the easiest Christmas songs to pick are Last Christmas, It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Feliz Navidad because those songs do not contain much variation or vocal acrobatics so as long as you start in the right key, you should be fine to stumble your way through them and not have people talking about your performance until next August.
So which ones should be avoided like a patch of yellow snow? Her top five that nobody who hasn't been trained should attempt are firstly 'Silent Night' because this song has much dipping between a low and high register and often within the same short phrase and without much space to pause for breath.
'Carol of the Bells' is performed in a minor key and needs at least two people who have to be perfectly timed with all that melodic chanting offset by foreboding notes and vocal imitations of bells so that should be a firm no regardless of how much Jägermeister you have drunk.
Next one up is 'Angels We Have Heard on High' as it  has one of the most technically demanding choruses of all the Christmas songs with the repeated 'Gloria in excelsis Deo' lyric having to be sustained over a long sequence of fluctuating notes which is merciless on the lungs unless you can breathe like a professional singer, which you can't so stay away from it.
'O Holy Night' is a beautiful song but a real test for anyone's vocal range with both lows and low lows, highs and high highs, octave jumps and sustaining notes as well as conveying emotion so definitely the one most likely to have you pulling a muscle.
Also on the list and the one to be absolutely fenced off is 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' which our friend says should come with a Health Warning to karaoke singers with it's soaring high notes and switches across the whole of Mariah Carey's full five octaves which is one more than most female singers are capable of which is why nobody but Mariah should even consider attempting it, and even most professional singers don't so you tanked up in a pub after warming up by singing in the shower because you are not going to do anything but suck at it.
She then gave a short burst of Silent Night which really did make Tiddles cry and i replied with a short burst of Glor....or.....or....or.....or....oria, which made her cry.

No Peace Coming For Gaza

President Joe Biden, who has spent the last few years calling for peace in Gaza while providing the weapons to prevent it, has expressed hope that this week’s ceasefire in Lebanon will be followed by one in Gaza but that seems unlikely as Israel may have found peace with Hezbollah in Lebanon but they have other plans for Gaza, and making peace know before they implement it would mess up their plans.  
In what has been one of the largest pieces of ethnic cleansing in the Middle East, Israel are seeing the opportunity to keep the manifesto pledge from Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Lukid Party that states that: 'The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river' which seems pretty conclusive as meaning no Palestinian State of their own in the West Bank or Gaza.
Now with Donald Trump preparing to take office in a few weeks’ time, there is growing talk in the region of the possibility that the new US administration will permit Israel to push some of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza across the border into Egypt, a proposal that minister Bezalel Smotrich agrees with as he said that: 'The correct solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees'.
The mass transfer of Palestinians will be anything but 'voluntary', which is why Israel are slicing off the North of Gaza and preventing the 100,00 displaced Gazan's returning, pushing them into an ever decreasing and crowded area as satellite images show Israeli troops clearing an area across the width of north Gaza, destroying hundreds of buildings and farm land.
An IDF spokesperson told the BBC that they are only destroying buildings and civilian infrastructure and building their own military infrastructure out of 'operational necessity' to neutralise Hamas but deny that it will become a military zone and civilians will be told to leave the north although they refuse to say how long the partition will remain in place.
Only the most gullible or blinkered Israeli supporter would believe that it isn't the basis of plan to expel Palestinians from the area permanently and replace them settlers because it is exactly the blueprint for what they have done in the West Bank so peace won't be coming to Gaza, what is coming is an extension of the current genocide and wholesale ethnic cleansing of Palestine.  

How Stupid?

War is stupid and people are stupid so sang Culture Club in the mid 80's and most military's have had cock-ups because you know, military people are not known for their smarts which is why in the second World War America attacked an empty Japanese Island and lost over 100 men.
When the Japanese invaded the U.S. occupied island of Kiska in 1943, the Americans decided to take it back with 35,000 men, 95 ships and 168 aircraft and carnage ensued with bombs dropped and then the soldiers charged in, shooting everything that somehow still stood.
When they stopped to reload they noticed a distinct lack of Japanese corpses as they had all left two weeks earlier although they did find 122 dead Americans which is pretty stupid to lose over 100 men  
fighting against no enemy although my favourite stupid war people story involves the British and the Ojibwa tribe of Indians.
In 1761, the British gained a new Fort in present day Michigan and also some new neighbors in the local tribe and it all began peacefully with just the occasional skirmish and scalping and the tribe would
play lacrosse near the entrance of the fort and the British watched them from the safety of the ramparts and then gradually coming outside to stand around the pitch watching.
Over time the rivalry between the Ojibwa and the Brits increased and they became ever more suspicious of each other and the Ojibawa, suspecting an imminent attack from the British, knew they would be slaughtered if they attacked so came up with a brilliantly cunning plan.
During one game of Lacrosse, with most of the British outside watching them, one of them 'accidentally' knocked the ball over the walls of the fort and two Ojibwa ran into the fort to fetch it, after a few minutes another few ran in to help them find the ball and then a few more and soon eventually, all the players were inside the gates and the British were still outside wondering why they were taking so long.
Meanwhile inside the Ojibwa were arming themselves from the British arsenal and locking the gate, slaughtered everyone inside.
Obviously the game had to be postponed and the Ojibwa went on to hold the fort for an entire year.

Open That Advent Calendar

Crack open those advent calendars because today is the first day in the official month of Christmas but some places have Christmas all around them every day of the year because they live there.
In the UK we have Cranberry in Staffordshire, Christmas Cross in Shropshire, Christmas Common in Oxfordshire, Cold Christmas and Mistletoe in Hertfordshire, Stocking Green in Suffolk, Christmaspie in Surrey and Bethlehem in South Wales so good luck finding virgins and wise men there.
Elsewhere we have three Christmas Island's, one in the Indian Ocean, another  in the Pacific and off the coast of Tasmania but it seems that Americans took a pause from naming places after parts of Great Britain and came over all Festive instead.
Almost all of Santa’s reindeer (except Prancer for some reason) are represented on the US map so we have Dasher in Georgia, Donner in Florida, Oregan and Louisiana, Comet in Missouri , Vixen in Louisiana, Dancer in Tennessee, Blitzen in Nevada, Cupid in Minnesota, and not to leave him out they have a Rudolph in South Dakota.
Why nobody want to live in Prancer is a bit of a strange one but there is a Reindeer Cove in Maine and Alaska so she's kinda covered and Utah has a Sleigh Canyon.
Other Festive sounding places in the USA are Stocking Hill in New York, an Elf in North Carolina and a less cheerful Elf Cemetery in Pennsylvania, Arizona is home to Santa Claus the town as well as two other Santa Clauses in Indiana and and Georgia.
Chimney Mountain is in Oklahoma and North Pole is in Idaho while Colorado has a Yule Creek as well as a place with the name of 'No Name' which probably means the Town Officials were too drunk of Christmas Cheer when they thought of that one.